<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">On Nov 27, 2006, at 10:39 PM, Michel Fortin wrote:</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DA">To me, a figure contains illustrative content attached to a document. It may be an image, a code sample, or a snippet of another document used as an example. I think it's important we do not try to narrow too much what can and what cannot be contained in a figure; that's the job of the author do decide.</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">On Nov 28, 2006, at 1:13 AM, fantasai wrote:</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DA">Some examples of this kind of usage, albeit without the captions:</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DA"> </FONT><A href="http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/writing/markup#notes"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EB">http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/writing/markup#notes</FONT></A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In principle, I see your point, but I don't see that such broadly defined figures would have widespread practical value. A "figure" in print publishing traditionally referred to anything that couldn't be normally typeset, but in practice that usually referred to images, charts/graphs ( which in HTML would be inserted as images also), and tables (which in HTML have their own structure and markup). A "figure" in HTML seems to me to serve the same purpose: to denote and describe illustrative content that cannot itself be marked up with HTML.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The example from mozilla.org doesn't require any special container element, because it needs no caption. The set-aside text is an example of what's being discussed in the surrounding text, and the heading "example" serves perfectly well to explain that. Once we say that plain text can be a "figure," I'm not sure what meaning "figure" really has any longer; it could be almost anything. And if it could be almost any piece of text that the author feels is an aside, it will have no semantic consistency, and will then be functionally no different from <div>. </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Additionally, one of the main reasons to include an element for image captioning is machine-based indexing, and if the figure is plain text in the page, that isn't a problem. </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I think that this broad notion of a "figure" is quite clever but frankly too clever for the typical person using HTML. It requires a level of editorial decision-making that I fear will confuse more authors than it helps, and confused authors make a confusing web.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-----</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">David Walbert </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">LEARN NC, UNC-Chapel Hill</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:dwalbert@learnnc.org">dwalbert@learnnc.org</A></DIV></BODY></HTML>