[whatwg] image captions

[David Walbert]

On Jun 27, 2006, at 7:42 AM, dolphinling wrote:

> But there's the implicit association given by the fact that they're  
> there, together, in the <div>, and nothing else is. Do you really  
> need anything more than that?

There is also the implicit association given by the fact that the  
caption immediately follows the image. Visually, one assumes that the  
caption would be placed next to or beneath the image; nonvisually,  
one would hear or read the caption directly after the image or its  
alternate text. So there is certainly nothing "wrong," in practical  
terms, with simply placing them together in a logical div and not  
worrying further about it. (One also assumes that the text of the  
caption should clearly relate to the image -- clear writing will help  
make the association clear.)

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.


____________________________________
David J. Walbert
Editorial Director & Information Designer
LEARN NC
School of Education
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill



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