[whatwg] One label: multiple fields
Elliotte Harold
elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Tue Mar 13 10:37:31 PDT 2007
Currently in HTML 4, and apparently in Web Forms 2, there is a rule that
each label element applies to exactly one input field. 10 inputs, at
least 10 labels.
However looking at a number of tabular but not exactly repeating forms,
both on the Web and on paper, I notice that it common for the column
headers to essentially serve as label for the input fields. For example
Homework 1 Homework 2 Homework 3
John Smith 87 86 98
Jane Jones 100 78 98
Fred Wilde 89 65 69
What strikes me about examples like this is that the labels for the
input fields naturally apply to more than one input field. For example,
in the above each label covers three fields. I wonder if there's a
common use case to say something like
<label for="A1 A2 A3">Homework 1</label>
<label for="B1 B2 B3">Homework 2</label>
<label for="C1 C2 C3">Homework 3</label>
Currently this is not possible. The label's for attribute can only point
to one input element.
Some of these are cases of repeating forms. I'm not yet convinced all of
them are, though. I need to explore that further. In particular, this
seems to come up even in fixed forms with no add, delete, or move
functionality expected. Still if the labels repeat maybe it just is a
repeating control? I'm not sure.
Anyone else want to chime in here? Has anybody else noticed a need that
would be solved by essentially changing the for attribute from IDREF to
IDREFS? Thoughts?
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
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