Re: Disambiguating @summary from a long descriptor

Joshue O Connor wrote:
> 4) Finally it should be appraised just for what it is - a mechanism for
> describing the relationships between data cells in complex tables that
> is useful for blind and VIP and we need to explicitly keep it as such.

One issue here, from my point of view, is that the attribute name is a 
serious mismatch for that function.... which leads to major author 
confusion as to what should go in this attribute.  I know if I were 
authoring a web page and had to put in an @summary for some reason (e.g. 
mandate from on high), I'd have no idea what to do with it.  The name 
would mislead me, and even if I went and read the spec I'd still have no 
idea what to put in it.

Would it make sense to add a datastructure attribute (or some other more 
suitable name), require UAs to look for the relationships between data 
cells in that attribute and then in @summary in that order, and make use 
of @summary a validator warning or some such?  And make sure that the 
spec has some examples of tables and corresponding @datastructure values.

-Boris

Received on Wednesday, 10 June 2009 15:04:56 UTC