Re: Disambiguating @summary from a long descriptor

Boris Zbarsky wrote:
> Joshue O Connor wrote:
>> 4) Finally it should be appraised just for what it is - a mechanism for
>> describing the relationships between data cells in complex tables that
>> is useful for blind and VIP and we need to explicitly keep it as such.
> 
> One issue here, from my point of view, is that the attribute name is a
> serious mismatch for that function.... which leads to major author
> confusion as to what should go in this attribute. 

Yes, I agree.

> Would it make sense to add a datastructure attribute (or some other more
> suitable name), require UAs to look for the relationships between data
> cells in that attribute and then in @summary in that order, and make use
> of @summary a validator warning or some such?  And make sure that the
> spec has some examples of tables and corresponding @datastructure values.

It may be best to leave it as it is (in particular to support backwards
compatibility) and start raising awareness of @summary soley as a
descriptor for data cell relationships. Dropping the word "Purpose" from
the original HTML4 DTD would help. [1]

Cheers

Josh

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#adef-summary

Received on Thursday, 11 June 2009 08:30:33 UTC