[whatwg] several messages about <figure> and related subjects

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:42 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Sep 2007, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> 4) Another alternative would be using a new unknown element. Whipping

> > out my thesaurus, I see <rubric>, <inscription>. Another possibility is
> > something like <figcaption> (to avoid the problems <caption> would cause
> > for figures inside tables), but that wouldn't be a good fit for
> > <details>.
>
> <figcaption> and <detailscaption> and so on just seems like it would make
> the language really complicated.
>
> We've waited years for <figure>, can't we wait a few more while browsers
> get their act together in their parsers?
>

Speaking purely for myself, the 3 (+?) elements for labelling things (label,
caption, legend) certainly cause me a touch of confusion every time I need
to code up something using them.  If I have to think for a few second about
an element, even given the tiny set of elements in HTML, there's something
wrong.  I *greatly* favor repurposing the semantics of an existing element.

I'd *love* to use caption, as it seems the closest to the semantics we're
wanting, but those parsing errors really kill it.  Legend is my second
choice, and the smaller glitches it experiences seem fine to me.  We can
deal with that until the browsers catch up.
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