Work on Alternate Proposals for ISSUE-83 dt-dd-semantics

On ISSUE-83 dt-dd-semantics, it seems like many people roughly agree  
with Shelley's reasoning on Shelley's issue, but prefer other  
alternatives to the proposed "fltcap" element.

Lachlan Hunt started a wiki page to come up with shared rationale, and  
flesh out the various proposals:
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Change_Proposal:_figure_and_details

(Note: Yes, this is in WHATWG space, any alternate Change Proposals  
that are actually put forward will be posted somewhere in W3C space.  
Let's thank Lachy for starting this effort and not fuss too much about  
choice of wiki for the scratch space, please.)

So far, there are people filling in the details for the following  
proposals:

- (Proposal 3) Replace dt/dd with <fcaption> for <figure>, and  
<dlabel> for <details> (no special element for the body/contents parts).
- (Proposal 6) Replace dt/dd with an @caption attribute for <figure>,  
and detain dt/dd for <details>.

The following proposals are listed, but so far no one has yet stepped  
up to fill in the details:

- (Proposal 1) Replace dt/dd with <legend> for both <figure> and  
<details> (i.e. go back to what we had before the dt/dd change).
- (Proposal 2) Replace dt/dd with <c> for both <figure> and <details>.
- (Proposal 4) Replace dt/dd with <caption> for <figure> and <label>  
for <details>, change the parsing algorithm to make <caption> not  
break out of tables inside <figure>, and change the association rules  
for <label> such that when it is the first or last child of <details>,  
it is associated with the <details> instead of any contained form  
controls.
- (Proposal 5) Replace dt/dd with <h1> for both <figure> and <details>.
- (Proposal 7) Replace dt with <fcaption> for <figure>, and <dlabel>  
for <details>; replace dd with an optional <fbody> for <figure> and an  
optional <dbody> for <details>.

If anyone would like to write up these other ideas, or contribute to  
the shared rationale, or improve an existing writeup, or add a new  
idea, please feel free to do so. Also please feel free to reuse any of  
this content in other alternate proposals. (And in particular, Shelley  
is also welcome to use any of this content to update her original  
Change Proposal if she wishes to do so, or to otherwise contribute to  
the wiki page.)

I note also note that so far, no one seems willing to write the  
counter-proposal that defends the status quo of dt/dd.

If we get a number of proposals that suggest replacing dt/dd and none  
defending it, then my hope is that after some discussion one will  
emerge as the clear winner and we can get by without a poll. In the  
meantime, it seems like a good idea to thoroughly document the  
different proposals. I encourage Working Group members to contribute,  
even if that is just by stating a preference for one of the currently  
undocumented ones. I am willing to help with the write-up for 4, 5 or  
7 out of the above if anyone finds one of those to be their favorite.

Regards,
Maciej

(Disclaimer: I have contributed to the cited Web page.)

Received on Monday, 11 January 2010 22:17:33 UTC