[whatwg] One label: multiple fields
Simon Pieters
zcorpan at gmail.com
Tue Mar 13 11:05:15 PDT 2007
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:37:31 +0100, Elliotte Harold
<elharo at metalab.unc.edu> wrote:
> 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.
We could just say that if a form control is in a table data cell, and
doesn't have a <label> associated with it, then the cell's header cells
are labels for the form control.
--
Simon Pieters
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