On Tue, 3 Aug 2010, Tantek �~Gelik wrote:
The name of the summary element however is too generic sounding of an
element name for this special usage.
I don't see why that's a problem.
It is inevitable that people will begin using the summary element when
they simply mean a semantic summary, perhaps of a section or
article.
If that happens, they'll get validator errors.
If it happens so much that the meaning of the element de-facto changes,
then we can change the spec.
However, I think it's premature to assume it'll happen.
I say inevitable due to the broad evidence presented by the known
existing problem with the address element (special use - for contact
information for the document, but used and often errantly taught as a
generic address for street addresses).
address, while often thought to be generic, is actually _used_ correctly
quite a lot of the time it is used at all -- and that's without any help
from validators. If anything, I think we should take this as a good sign.
(If I recall correctly based on my research a few years back, address is
used wrongly less often than, say, blockquote, and less often than ul
even in cases where the validator complains of such misuse.)
Thus we should either:
Rename the details summary to something more specific (suggestions
welcome), OR:
If there is a radically better name then we should consider it, but given
the number of times this has changed names already, and the high political
cost of changing it again (the W3C HTML WG has decided on the name
summary), it would really have to be _radically_ better.
Alternatively make the summary element generic. Make it an actual
summary inside article or body, as well as inside details. Allow
summary anywhere header is allowed (basically, make it a part of the
new section related elements).
What's the use case? What problem does this solve?
Doing this would actually break use of summary in details, by the way,
since there'd no longer be a way to recognise the legend of the details
from the first summary of the implied section in details (or it would be
very confusing, with the first summary having a different functional
meaning than the second).
Really I wish we could just use legend, personally, but that ship has
unfortunately sailed.
On Tue, 3 Aug 2010, Andrew Hayward wrote:
In a somewhat related note, following a real-world conversation I had
with Jeremy Keith a short while ago, is there a reason why summary
(or the theoretical renamed less generic alternative) isn't being used
inside figures too, instead of another new element (figcaption)?
At the time Jeremy wasn't able to give me an answer, but if it's
already been discussed and I just missed it, my apologies.
summary didn't seem to convey the right meaning for figure's legend.
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A/, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
