Re: Title as attribute or element?

The title attribute from the language XLink
(see: http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/ ) is intended for
hyperlinks. Even if it is reused in other languages
like SVG, it is still only useful for elements referencing
other documents/content somehow.

And indeed, if we look for example in the related table
of the SVG tiny 1.2 LC we only find such elements: 
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile12/attributeTable.html#attribute_xlink__title

For other elements like svg it is not mentioned and has therefore 
no meaning or not the meaning you are looking for. 
Therefore the title attribute from XLink is not useful for the applications
you are looking for and is not used in SVG for such a purpose too.

As already mentioned in the specifications, authors should only use
exactly one title element (and I think it is useful too to provide exactly
one desc element) as a direct children of the svg element. To simplify
the situation for user agent the position of the title (and desc) of the
svg element is on top in the source code, before other children of the 
svg element.

Another title and desc elements inside a children of the svg element are
intended for this element and its children and not for the parent 
svg element itself. If user agents chooses for example a title of a
g element somewhere inside the svg as a title of the complete
document, I think, this is simply an error and should be replaced
by something useful in the next version of this user agent ;o)

Oh - and I use title and desc in almost any document and often
for other elements than the svg element - therefore only my files
are already maybe above 2000 freely available samples for
SVG documents with a title element; documents in the test suite
contain titles too, therefore you cannot say, that they are not
used, only the implementations/interpretation of such elements are 
bad in several user agents or they to not provide a structured 
alternative text view of an SVG document using such information, 
but indeed such documents exit. 
And I strongly recommend authors to use them and to 
insist, that there preferred user agents provide a useful access
to all title and desc elements in an SVG document, because without
most of such documents do not really have a meaning at all, they
are only decorative (what is not bad, but for many images not enough).

About a good choice of a title for test samples: This is maybe a matter
of taste. It is important to identify the test sample itself and there is
already a lot of description available outside the document within the
test suite, therefore this is a slightly different approach as for a 
standalone document used for a different purpose.
In my own text suite however I use title and desc more related to
the approach you have in mind and having additionally similar
information available outside the test files to ensure a good 
accessibility to the test itself. This is some more time consuming
work, but I think, it is useful for the structure and understanding
of my own test suite.

Received on Sunday, 6 January 2008 12:59:05 UTC