Re: rationale for inclusion of hgroup in html5?

Hi Jirka,

thanks for the info, one of the issues I have with hgroup is that in regards
to accessibility its role mapping as currently specced it removes any
differentiation between the headings/subheadings.

thus for example:

<hgroup >
   <h2>Foo</h2>
   <h3>Bar</h3>
 </hgroup>

becomes

<h2>
<p>Foo</p>
<p>Bar</p>
</h2>

the heading and subheading are collapsed into a single heading for users of
assistive technology.

I agree that defining a semantic of subheading is better.


regards
stevef

On 24 January 2011 10:58, Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz> wrote:

> Steve Faulkner wrote:
>
> > I understand that having a subheading/subtitle is quite common, What i am
> > seeking is detailed reasoning on why hgroup was chosen as the method to
> > represent the semantics of subheadings. Even some data on the use of
> hgroup
> > like container elements around heading/subheadings would be useful, for
> > example the example you cite:
> >
> > <h1><a id="title" name="title">Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
> (Fifth
> > Edition)</a></h1>
> > <h2><a id="w3c-doctype" name="w3c-doctype">W3C Recommendation 26 November
> > 2008</a></h2>
> >
> > uses a <div class="head"> to go around the headings and other content,
> not a
> > div acting as a container for the heading/subheading.
>
> DocBook has title/subtitle for ages. If you have DocBook content like:
>
> <section>
>  <title>Foo</title>
>  <subtitle>Bar</subtitle>
>  ...content of section...
> </section>
>
> it is usually transformed to HTML as:
>
> <div class="section">
>  <div class="titlepage">
>    <h2 class="title">Foo</h2>
>    <h3 class="subtitle">Bar</h3>
>  </div>
>  ... content of section ...
> </div>
>
> But note that <div class="titlepage"> is there for completely different
> reasons that <hgroup> -- it wraps all metadata about section of content
> -- there could be author, publication date, abstract, ... -- and you
> might want to apply different styling for this content. So it is more
> closer to HTML5's <header> element.
>
> If the only purpose of <hgroup> is to eliminate some elements from
> outline, then I think that much more better and flexible solution is to
> explicitly mark subtitles as such when this can't be inferred from
> structure, e.g.
>
> <h2>Title</h2>
> <h3 role="subtitle">Subtitle</h3> <!-- Explicit removal from outline -->
>
> vs.
>
> <section>
>  <h2>Title</h2>
>  <h3>Subtitle</h3>              <!-- Implicit removal from outline -->
>  ...
> </section>
>
> vs.
>
> <section>
>  <h2>Title</h2>
>  <section>
>    <h3>Title of nested section</h3>
>    ...
>  </section>
>  ...
> </section>
>
>                                Jirka
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Jirka Kosek      e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz      http://xmlguru.cz
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>       Professional XML consulting and training services
>  DocBook customization, custom XSLT/XSL-FO document processing
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>  OASIS DocBook TC member, W3C Invited Expert, ISO JTC1/SC34 member
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG

www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com |
www.twitter.com/stevefaulkner
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives -
dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/
Web Accessibility Toolbar - www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html