Quoting David Walbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
For scripting purposes I have occasionally needed to tie an image and its caption explicitly by giving them related IDs that a particular javascript function can call (e.g. img id="img1" and p id="img- caption"), and it would be helpful in these situations to have a standard syntax for that explicit relation. But the availability of such syntax should not imply that everyone needs to use it for all markup, all the time; I can't see it being useful in ordinary web design (to the reader/user, which should ultimately be the point) unless there are actions associated with the image and caption.
If the relationship between the image and caption is well defined. For example, when the next sibling _element_ of <img> is <p>, <p> is the caption of <img> you can easily introduce some DOM attribute on HTMLImageElement named caption that gives you back the HTMLParagraphElement associated with it.
-- Anne van Kesteren <http://annevankesteren.nl/>
