Re: Draft text for summary attribute definition

Robert J Burns 2009-03-01 19.24:
> Some are arguing with you that your proposal doesn't make sense. I 
> cannot imagine what they would be thinking in that respect. If we were 
> designing HTML from scratch I could easily see attaching the 'summary' 
> attribute to the 'caption' element.
> 
> However, I think given that we already have legacy content and legacy 
> UAs that support a 'summary' attribute on the 'table' element instead of 
> the 'caption' element, it is more important to discuss what compels us 
> to make a change now. That's the only part I'm having trouble 
> understanding. Indeed there are similarities and differences between 
> captions and summaries and the common confusion by authors between them 
> needs to be addressed. However, I don't yet see how moving the summary 
> from the table to the caption substantially addresses the confusions. 
> Indeed I'm concerned it might introduce other confusion.

I said this myself that when all things considered, table@summary 
might be better.

My answer in a nutshell: authors.

Even this wg has trouble understanding the issue. I believe we had 
lead more fruitful debate with caption@summary.

If we don't change anything about @summary, then all we can do for 
authors is writing a better description of it in the draft. Well, 
we can also define how UA should display it and so on. There are 
certainly many things one can do still.

But if HTML5 goes for caption@summary then it can be portrayed 
this way:

Because authors did not see that the two has to have different 
content, and because authors kept writing "layout tables" in 
table@summary, something they are not known to use <caption> for, 
@summary was moved to <caption> to help authors to discern between 
the <caption> and @summary and to help them see that both are 
visible metadata, except that @summary is only visible for the 
unsighted. (Plus that it is easier to test via CSS etc.)
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Sunday, 1 March 2009 18:56:44 UTC