The original idea for using the attribute was that it could apply to a
wide range of elements, like p, div, etc. But that makes it difficult
for browsers to provide sensible default styling for captions, since
it requires carefully overriding existing defaults for so many other
elements.
To some extent, it even makes it difficult for authors to provide
reasonable styles if they can't guarantee which elements content
writers will choose for their caption. Imagine designing a CMS
template with some default styles for figure and caption, the CSS in
the template would have to deal with so many possible element choices
just for the caption, it'll be difficult to get it right and test
everything.
This does make sense. Would be really hard, for sure.
There are only 2 sensible options for element choices: <legend> or
introducing a new element. Using dt/dd is *not* and was never a
sensible choice for figure, and the idea must be dropped.
As caption and legend have much too many backwards compatibility issues,
the only possible solution is either a new element or dropping the whole
figure-thing. The second thing should really be taken into account.
Better no syntax than bad syntax :)
What tag-titles could be used to mark the captions up? I thought of
<desc> or <description> (first is better). Does not seem to be taken,
but I don't know whether it is as intuitive. (But I as a German, who
can't speak English very well, would search for "html5 image
description" next after "html5 caption".)
MfG Nikita Popov
