Re: Expansion of the summary tag

> > I would personally like to see a summary or description tag for the head
> > section of an XHTML document. [...]
 
> There already is a sufficient mechanism offered by meta elements, only
> designed to provide additional information about the associated document
(meta
> data are 'data about data', CMIIW). In the mentioned case, you can e.g.
use one
> of the following elements
 
>    <meta name="description" content="(document description)" />
>    <meta name="DC.Description" content="(document description)" />
 
> to describe and summarize your document.
 
The title element is also metadata, but when a piece of metadata is
sufficiently important enough it is reasonable to create an element.  Also
using attributes for long text is cumbersome at best (see the table
element).  Also I suggested that summary be expanded to include elements
besides tables.  Section tags could have summary data associated with them
as well as form tags.  The meta attribute won't help with those.  Using one
consistent tag for meaning makes the learning process a lot simpler.
Summaries go in the summary tag.
 
> > [...] As a further suggestion, might I suggest that for both the title
and
> > the summary [...]
 
> There is at least the flaw that you cannot use several 'title' and
'summary'
> IDs on a single page, and I furthermore question this suggestion in
general
> [...].
 

You really wouldn't want to use more than one title or summary id on a page.
I used them because they were simple.  In no way was I trying to imply that
the id's title and summary had any special meaning.  Also you wouldn't want
to reference more than one tag for title or summary information.  How would
you combine them?  It could be possible, but it would in no way be elegant.

 

Orion Adrian