Re: Draft text for summary attribute definition

Robert J Burns 2009-03-01 05.33:
> On Feb 28, 2009, at 10:35 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>> Gez Lemon 2009-03-01 02.45:
>>> 2009/3/1 Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>:

>>     <caption summary="Summary text."></caption>


> Just to clarify I wasn't yet trying to address your suggestion in 
> anything I said. Also my understanding was that Gez was more a criticism 
> of what I had said than anything about your proposal.

No problem.

> As for your proposal directly. I don't have any strong objections to 
> this approach. I also think your proposal would work equally well with 
> either version A or version B. 

Yes, I guess so. I saw text bit in version b which spoke about 
other users than speech and braille users, and I was not certain I 
agreed to that.

> I'm still trying to think through why 
> associating the table's summary with the caption is superior to 
> associating it with the table itself (leaving the CSS issues aside). 
> Perhaps you could say a little more about what problem this addresses. 

I feel that it addresses directly in the code the juxtaposing of 
summary and <caption> that I think is needed. The <caption> 
element is one that the author will often be working with all the 
time - it is the place where he attributes meaning to the entire 
table. The title might often be the final touch. This is also 
natural moment for when to add info about the table struture.

Wheras when the author starts with the <table> element, he might 
not have much clue about what the content will be. Most authors 
considers <table> only a kind of container element - they do not 
consider it any more semantic than <div>. In order to add anything 
inside @summary, one must either know the table structure before 
one creates the table, or one must go back to the <table> element 
and add @summary once it is finished.

The title - aka caption - however, one works with through out the 
table creation process, I think.

And, if one is running the table through some acessibilty checker 
which tells the author to add a caption@summary, the author might 
in the same go be reminded about adding caption conten as well.

(And likewise, if one has added a caption, and the checker asks 
for a summary, then I think many will find it naturally to add it 
to the caption@summary.)

> If we have captions always in the caption element and summaries as 
> defined in either version A or version B always in the 'summary' 
> attribute, what problems arise in attaching that 'summary' attribute to 
> the table instead of the 'caption' element?

I describe some of those above.  One should add the summary when 
one knows the entire table structure. When the author adds the 
caption is also the moment when he thinks about the structure. 
While when @summary is part of table, then the whole thing become 
more of a hard to understand accessibility burdon. (I hope this 
was answered what you asked a litle bit, at least.)

ISSUE-32

-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Sunday, 1 March 2009 05:39:43 UTC