Re: Equivalency of caption, h, and title.

Orion Adrian wrote:
> It seems very much to me that caption, h and title are all the same 
> element.  They describe the object that they are the child of...

   No.  There are distinct differences between the elements.

* The <title> element is used to identify the document.
   A title element is like the title of a book, usually printed on the
   front cover.  Occationally, also printed inside, but it's clearly
   distinct from the headings.
* The <h> element, in combination with the section element, indicate the
   structure of the document.
   Just like in a book, headings identify sections of the chapter, or
   document.  I can kind of understand your comparison of <h> and <title>
   as being similar, but they are not the same.
* The <caption> element's text should describe the nature of the table
   or the object.
   When used in books, and other documents, they usually descibe tables
   and/or images.  This is not, in any way, similar to <h> or <title>.


> Also I suggest adding a summary tag to the content models of certain block 
> elements.  Together these would add quite a bit of semantic 
> information.

   I made a similar proposal to this in December, but also included the 
<caption> element.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2003Dec/0047.html

   As a colliery to this, might I also suggest moving the
> title attribute from the core attribute collection and attaching it only 
> to inline elements.

   Why?


> <object …>
>     <title>Replaces caption</title>
>     <summary>Summary of object</summary>
>     <param...
>     <param…
> </object>

   Again, <title> is nothing like <caption>, it is closer to <h>, but 
not the same.  If another title was added to the above example to serve 
as a heading for some additional alternate content, how would a UA know 
the difference, and also, it would just cause confusion for document 
authors.

CYA
...Lachy!

Received on Wednesday, 11 February 2004 08:15:11 UTC