[whatwg] many messages regarding image captions

[James Graham]

> On Sat, 4 Nov 2006, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>>>> > > >
>>>> > > > or make the association implicit by using the for attribute
>>>> > > > <embed id="funnyVid" ...>
>>>> > > > <caption for="funnyVid">A funny video of a man being hit in the groin by a
>>>> > > > football</caption>
>> > 
>> > That would work for the current page layouts of YouTube and Google Video.
>> > 
>>> > > I think what would work best for this is the <figure> element I've proposed
>>> > > back in june:
>>> > > 
>>> > >     <figure>
>>> > >       <caption>Some caption here</caption>
>>> > >       ...
>>> > >     </figure>
>>> > > ...
>> > 
>> > That would not. (At least, not without some tricky CSS.)
> 
> Could you elaborate on that? I don't really understand why you think that. 
> Unless you mean just because of the order, but we could easily just allow 
> the caption to go at the end of the <figure> element.

Possibly because, on YouTube, at least, the caption is in a column next to the 
video. It's not obvious how to make that work in the current model.

>> I suggest that this element behave in the opposite way from alt=: 
>> > whereas alt= should be presented only if the image itself is *not* 
>> > presented, the caption element should be presented only if the image 
>> > itself *is* presented. Otherwise there would be the same problem with 
>> > non-sequiturs in non-visual media as there is with descriptive alt=.
> 
> Agreed; spec now requires this. Not sure how to make this jive with the 
> idea of allowing <pre>/<ol>/etc, though; see above.

I think I disagree; I'm not sure what we gain by hiding the caption and often I 
can imagine it being positively useful even without the image.


-- 
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead