Thanks, Steve.
You wrote: "Unclear what your issue is with figure/figcaption, the semantics
of the figure element is that its a grouping element."
My issue is the choice of the word "figure" for this tag. I can't find any
English dictionary reference that defines "figure" as a "group of items."
The word figure has quite a few definitions and most of them involve:
- Something to do with a numerical symbol or value amount;
- Something to do with a person, such as their appearance or standing in
society;
- A symbol of something.
There's no "group" concept in any of the definitions.
If you want a tag that groups things, why not call it <GROUP>? Otherwise
you might as well randomly choose any word in the dictionary to represent
this "grouping element."
<CHOCOLATE> would be just as accurate as <FIGURE>.
The second issue I have is that the computer industry, especially
programmers, takes common words and flips them upside down, using them in
ways never intended. This doesn't help the industry. As a former college
instructor of several programming languages and technologies, I've watched
this confuse the heck out of my students, semester after semester.
Example:
HTML defined all graphics in a webpage to use the <IMG> tag. I wish a better
word had been chosen because "image" is defined as a likeness of something.
But it is broad enough that I'm willing to shoehorn every graphic on a
webpage into the figure tag.
A few years later Adobe created tagged PDFs and instead of coordinating
their code with existing HTML tags, they decide to reinvent the wheel and
tag every graphic in a PDF as <FIGURE>. Bad decision for 2 reasons:
1. It doesn't coordinate with the existing tag used by HTML.
2. There are many types of graphics that don't fit the definition of a
"figure," such as a photograph of a landscape vista.
W.T.F. Didn't anyone at Adobe have access to a list of HTML tags or have
basic training in HTLM 101?
And now you're telling us to use <FIGURE> as a grouping tag.
W.T.F. Doesn't anyone on the HTML team have access to a dictionary or
thesaurus?
As I said before: "Never in my editorial mind would I ever call a table a
figure, nor the extracted poem in an HTML5 example on the W3C's website.
Jeeze Louise, are there any professional editors at the W3C who can step in
and say 'that's not the best word for that item'?"
Now, if you decide to call this "grouping element" <CHOCOLATE>, you won't
get any complaints out of me! <grin>
But don't call it <FIGURE>. That's just so wrong on so many levels.
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Steve Faulkner
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2013 8:49 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Table footnotes <tfoot>, <figure> or <section> ?
Hi Bevi,
I am one of the editors of the HTML spec [1]
Anybody can file a bug [2] against the HTML spec or send an email to the
public html comments list [3] if they have constructive input.
Unclear what your issue is with figure/figcaption, the semantics of the
figure element is that its a grouping element. figcaption allows a
programmatically associated caption to be added. images are the obvious use
case but others are also covered. If you don't like the idea of using for
content other than images then don't.
On 16 May 2013 17:30, Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Rabab wrote: "...- HTML 5 example specifies <figure> to code table
> footnotes. However, we prefer not to use <figure> for data tables. ...
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/common-idioms.html#footnotes."
>
> Can't answer your question Rabab, but it brings up another related issue:
> the use of one term <FIGURE> in 2 different ways.
>
> In PDFs, all graphical images are tagged with <FIGURE>.
>
> But in HTML 5, it's used for any content, not just graphics, that are
> related to the main story content.
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/grouping-content.html#the-figure-element
> "some flow content, optionally with a caption, that is self-contained
> and is typically referenced as a single unit from the main flow of the
document."
>
> The specific reference above for tables reads: "A figure element is
> used to give a single legend to the combination of the table and its
footnotes."
>
> Never in my editorial mind would I ever call a table a figure, nor the
> extracted poem in an HTML5 example on the W3C's website. Jeeze Louise,
> are there any professional editors at the W3C who can step in and say
> "that's not the best word for that item"?
>
> It would be so helpful to all communities, web developers and document
> specialists, if the power players with the W3C could coordinate their
> use of the same tag.
>
> -Bevi Chagnon
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