Re: Summary of Thursday's IRC conversation about @summary

On Sat, 6 Jun 2009, Laura Carlson wrote:
> 
> Jonas wrote:
> 
> >> If a feature that we've developed is being improperly used
> >> after years of adoption, we have to change something.
> >
> > Long Term Solution Possibilities
> > http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE#head-847d2ebafa6828471a3d2777ad3676944007c35d
> 
> What do you think of the  Long Term Solution Possibilities listed in
> the Wiki, in particular a new <summary> element or equivalent?

I will look at the above closely when I get to this issue in my slog 
through feedback e-mails, but in the meantime I would really appreciate 
coherent e-mails for each proposal. When I glanced at the wiki just now I 
actually couldn't work out what many of the proposals were -- just 
proposing a new element name, for example, doesn't really mean anything -- 
what does the element do? What are the proposed conformance criteria for 
authors? For browser vendors? For accessibility tools? How does it solve 
the problems that have been raised? What new problems can it introduce? 
(One of the easiest ways to spot a proposal that hasn't been thought 
through properly is to see one that doesn't have any serious drawbacks 
listed -- in practice, especially on the Web with HTML, every option tends 
to suck in different ways, so if an option doesn't have a coherent list of 
real problems, it probably hasn't been thought through properly.)

Generally speaking, bulleted lists are not a good way to propose 
something; there is a tendency when writing bulleted lists to use 
incomplete thoughts much like with a powerpoint presentation. Writing full 
text e-mails leads to a more thought-through proposal.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 8 June 2009 06:14:56 UTC