Re: Request for group input on ISSUE-83 (figure and details captions)

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
> 
> So it sounds like no one else has strong feelings. I therefore suggest 
> that Ian should implement the fcaption/dlabel Change Proposal: 
> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ChangeProposals/DdDtFcaptionDlabel
> 
> I think it would be fine to pick either of <fcaption> or <figcaption>, 
> and either of <dlabel> or <dsummary>. Once that change is made, the 
> Chairs will post a Call for Consensus to close this issue by amicable 
> resolution.

<figcaption> seems reasonable, but can't we use <summary> instead of 
<dsummary>? The argument that it would be confusing because of summary="" 
doesn't seem to really hold water given that authors have no problems with 
<title> and title="", <style> and style="", <span> and span="", or <cite> 
and cite="", and nobody has particularly complained about us adding 
<label> and label="" or <form> and form="" in HTML5. In fact the best 
example may be <abbr> and abbr="", which haven't caused anyone any 
confusion that I'm aware of, where the meaning is subtly different in 
almost exactly the same way as proposed here, and where the attribute is 
similarly considered by many to be a feature that should be removed from 
the language anyway.

Furthermore:

   <details>
     <summary> 20% complete </summary>
     <p>Bla bla</p>
     <p>Bla bla</p>
   </details>

...is more consistent with:

   <fieldset>
     <legend> Pizza toppings </legend>
     <p>Bla bla</p>
     <p>Bla bla</p>
  </fieldset>

...than it would be if we were to use <dsummary> -- the only elements 
where HTML has initial-word as an element naming pattern are <iframe>, 
whose etymology I could not determine, and <thead>, <tbody>, and <tfoot>, 
whose naming is consistent with some of the other table elements (<tr>, 
<td>, etc) in starting with a "t", and whose naming could not be a simple 
word or abbreviation (like <caption> and <col>) because of clashes with 
<head> and <body>.

I would hate to go through the heavy-weight process to decide on a single 
letter in an element name, but I would also hate to pick a suboptimal 
element name purely because of what, IMHO, is a weak objection.

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

Received on Sunday, 24 January 2010 04:58:50 UTC