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

Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> jgraham@opera.com On 09-06-10 10.38:
>> Quoting Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>:
>>
>>> What do you think of the summary element, as long term solution, that
>>> Laura has pointed out to several folks? Other than she didn't use
>>> bullets?
>>
>> As a child of <table> <summary> (or any other element) has too bad 
>> legacy compatibility properties to work.
> 
> I suppose there was meant to be a comma between "<table>" and 
> "<summary>".  

Indeed.

I discussed the issues here:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/mid/4A2DC7A6.206@malform.no

Yes, I saw that; it was rather helpful. I am not sure it is always
accurate though. For example you assert that "Until <summary> as child
of <table> is fully supported cross browser, authors must place the
summary as child of <figure>. This is a fully workable solution
though.". The statement that this solution is fully workable ignores the
fact that AT must be updated to understand the <figure> element implies
a relationship between the <figcaption> (or <legend>) and the table.
Otherwise the user experience will be the same as placing the summary in
an unassociated paragraph below the table. I am under the impression
that this is not considered acceptable for users of current UAs.

> Semantics is what must be agreed upon first, though.

If the goal is to find the best solution in the least time, pruning
possible solutions that have significant technical flaws early seems
like a better approach than keeping those as potential solutions after
the significant flaws have been recognised. I believe the parsing of
unexpected children of <table> in existing UAs is a significant enough
problem that we should reject any solution that relies on it, even if it
can be shown that the behaviour is not needed for the specific case of
<summary> in <table> in order to retain web compatibility and thus could
be changed in future UAs. I believe this view is consistent with our
design principles.

Received on Wednesday, 10 June 2009 15:30:39 UTC