Re: Footnotes and sectioning roots. <figure> and <table>

Ian Hickson On 09-06-06 01.04:
> On Sun, 3 May 2009, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

>>  seems logical that links inside ["Sectioning roots"] elements should 
>> be kept inside the element itself if the links are of "footnote nature".
> 
> I think it depends on the source of the notes.  [...]

> This seems very specific; do we really want to include text about this 
> kind of thing? It seems that we're really reaching into the fringe of what 
> is going to be useful here.

May be.

>> In particular the figure element, which represents a sectioning roots 
>> element that "can be moved away from the main flow of the document 
>> without affecting the document's meaning", needs footnotes advice.  
>> Because, if the footnote of a <figure> is placed outside the figure 
>> element itself, then it isn't possible to move the <figure> out the page 
>> without affecting the document's meaning. If the figure was removed, and 
>> the footnote natured notes remained in the page, those notes would be 
>> entirely meaningless. The draft should say that footnote natured links 
>> inside a figure element should point to footnotes inside the figure 
>> element itself. (This does not prevent that the figure could contain 
>> links that points to other, independent texts outside the figure 
>> element.)
> 
> You're misinterpreting "can be moved away from the main flow of the 
> document". It doesn't mean "removed", it literally means "move away", e.g. 
> to lower on the page.

OK, I see. ;-) (Laugh of myself.) However, "go away" can be 
synonymous to "disappear". So  it might be that I will not be the 
sole person to misread this.

So perhaps the text could be made clearer? For example, you could 
say "moved to another location on the same page".  Or "move _out 
of_ the main flow". You might also consider saying "text" rather 
than "document" so that one may also take in multipage documents ...

> If you removed the figure altogether, then anyone referring to the figure 
> would have its meaning changed too. It's not limited to footnotes.
> 
> 
>> Figure elements used as table containers should be given special 
>> attention. Firstly, table footnotes is a feature that is sought for - 
>> see for instance Ferg [1].  Text in table cells often needs to be short. 
>> Thus a link to a footnote might be required to explain what the short 
>> text means. Such footnotes needs to be close to the table.
> 
> I don't see why they need to be close to the table. Why can't they be at 
> the bottom of the document, e.g. as in Wikipedia?

If the authors feel they need to be close, then they need to. If 
you want to make it a figure, then they need to ... You could say 
that I wanted to make clear that Ferg's usecase can  be solved 
this way.

>> [1] http://www.ferg.org/section508/htp04_proposal.html

-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Saturday, 6 June 2009 00:54:59 UTC