If I may add one other point that hasn't been touched on yet (that I'm aware of)...
IMHO, if the elimination of either the table Column coordinate or Row coordinate takes place, it will break the semantic nature of the table element. If you continue to use the table element with one coordinate and its corresponding data entries, the table element is then only being used for presentational purposes, thus the need for an appropriate semantic method, i.e. a definition list or other. I also use table attributes, especially to enhance assistive device identification and transfer of cognitive data from the table structure to the user. Kind regards, Frank M. Palinkas Microsoft M.V.P. - Windows Help M.C.P., M.C.T., M.C.S.E., M.C.D.B.A., A+ Senior Technical Communicator Web Standards & Accessibility Designer -------------------------------------------- website: http://frank.helpware.net email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------- Member: Society for Technical Communications (S.T.C.) Guild of Accessible Web Designers (G.A.W.D.S.) Web Standards Group (W.S.G.) -------------------------------------------- super group trading ltd. Sandhurst, Gauteng, South Africa website: http://www.supergroup.co.za -------------------------------------------- Work: +27 011 523 4931 Home: +27 011 455 5287 Fax: +27 011 455 3112 Mobile: +27 074 109 1908 -------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thierry Koblentz Sent: Thursday, 08 March, 2007 20:25 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Talking about tabular data... Nick Fitzsimons wrote: > On 8 Mar 2007, at 16:37:15, Thierry Koblentz wrote: >> But this definition applies to more than just table elements, >> isn't? In the >> above, we could replace the words "first column" with "dt" and >> "second column" with "dd" and it would make as much sense... > On the other hand, I personally believe that the use of a dl in this > example would make no *semantic* sense. After all, given the term > "President", the definition of that term would be something like "The > individual in charge of the organisation". "John Smith" simply cannot > be seen as a *definition* of the term "President", but is rather the > personal name of that entity which is *denoted* by the term > "President". > If it was called a "denotation list", then fair enough; but it's a > definition list, for grouping terms with their definitions (whatever > vague examples may be given in the standard). I see your point, but I'm not sure I agree as "definition" is often replaced by "description" which leaves more room for interpretation. http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/lists.html#h-10.3 The two examples given would relate to the "definition" concept you point out, but what about: <quote> Another application of DL, for example, is for marking up dialogues, with each DT naming a speaker, and each DD containing his or her words. </quote> In this case, the words in the DDs are *not* the definition of the speakers, it's even far from that... > Note also that all the elements and attributes of the HTML table > model that promote accessibility (summary, caption, axis, headers, > scope, abbr) are absent when a list of some kind is used. Still, I've > never come across anybody other than myself who uses them anyway :-( I don't think simple tables call for all the attributes in the box though. But anyway, talking about accessibility, marking up the given example with "accessible" table markup, would - imho - make screenreader users listen to information (mostly related to the table itself, not its content) they wouldn't even need to understand the data if it was marked up as a simple DL for example. --- Regards, Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
