- From: Michel Fortin <michel.fortin@michelf.com>
- Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:41:03 -0500
Le 28 nov. 2006 ? 9:34, David Walbert a ?crit : > In principle, I see your point, but I don't see that such broadly > defined figures would have widespread practical value. A "figure" > in print publishing traditionally referred to anything that > couldn't be normally typeset, but in practice that usually referred > to images, charts/graphs ( which in HTML would be inserted as > images also), and tables (which in HTML have their own structure > and markup). A "figure" in HTML seems to me to serve the same > purpose: to denote and describe illustrative content that cannot > itself be marked up with HTML. Then we conceive things differently. A figure in my mind is not something that can't be expressed in HTML. To embed non-HTML content, <embed>, <img>, <object>, and other inline XML languages are used; no need for a figure for that. A figure to me is something that provides support or illustration to the surrounding text. > The example from mozilla.org doesn't require any special container > element, because it needs no caption. The set-aside text is an > example of what's being discussed in the surrounding text, and the > heading "example" serves perfectly well to explain that. But remove the stylesheet and you can see the CSS-generated "Example" "heading" disappear. Now, how do you distinguish what is the main text and what is not? I believe that <figure class="example"> would be a better choice than <div class="example"> as it show that the content of the example is not to be taken as part of the main text, but serves as an illustration of what the main text is talking about. Maybe a new <example> element would be better suited for this, but it seems to me that "example" and "figure" often overlap in meaning. > Once we say that plain text can be a "figure," I'm not sure what > meaning "figure" really has any longer; it could be almost > anything. And if it could be almost any piece of text that the > author feels is an aside, it will have no semantic consistency, and > will then be functionally no different from <div>. <figure> illustrative or supporting content for the main content. <aside> tangential content which can be considered separate from the main content. I think the difference is pretty clear. - - - There is something interesting in the current proposal: it already allows arbitrary content inside it: fallback content. Someone could write: <figure> <legend>A nutritional information label on a box of cereal</ legend> <object data="nutritional-info.jpg"> <table> <caption><strong>Nutrition Facts</strong> - Per 1/2 cup (125 ml)</caption> <thead><tr><th>Ammount</th><th>% Daily Value</th></tr></ thead> <tbody>... replication of the table shown in the picture ...</tbody> </table> </object> </figure> This would show a picture of the nutritional information label on visual browsers; text readers and text-only browsers would still be able to give an adequate representation of the figure as a table captioned "Nutrition Facts - Per 1/2 cup (125 ml)". For visual browsers with images disabled, it would be interesting if the fallback table could be styled such as that it resemble the picture. For instance, there is a standard way to lay out nutritional information tables in Canada; I could add a couple of style rules here and there on the fallback content to place borders and margins to match the standard layout. And here lays the irony: if the idea was to display a sample nutritional information table with no other context element, the fallback content may give a better visual representation than the actual picture. Unless the image is vector-based or the table has needs really fancy styling, the styled table will certainly be of better quality than the image. Here is a page which could benefit from such an approach: <http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/label-etiquet/nutrition/interactive/ inl_main_e.html> If you look closely at the bottom of that same page, you'll see this markup: <p><strong>Bran Cereal</strong></p> <hr> <p><strong>Ingredients:</strong> Whole wheat, wheat bran, sugar/glucose-fructose, salt, malt (corn flour, malted barley), vitamins (thiamine hydrochloride, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, d-calcium pantothenate), minerals (iron, zinc oxide). </p> <hr> which is an illustration of a list of ingredients; completely done in HTML with some text inside a paragraph. A perfect use case for a paragraph as a figure: <figure> <legend>Brand Cereal</legend> <p><strong>Ingredients:</strong> Whole wheat, wheat bran, sugar/glucose-fructose, salt, malt (corn flour, malted barley), vitamins (thiamine hydrochloride, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, d-calcium pantothenate), minerals (iron, zinc oxide). </p> </figure> Michel Fortin michel.fortin at michelf.com http://www.michelf.com/
Received on Tuesday, 28 November 2006 11:41:03 UTC