[whatwg] <figure><img><* caption>

[Nikita Popov]

> The original idea for using the attribute was that it could apply to a 
> wide range of elements, like p, div, etc.  But that makes it difficult 
> for browsers to provide sensible default styling for captions, since 
> it requires carefully overriding existing defaults for so many other 
> elements.
>
> To some extent, it even makes it difficult for authors to provide 
> reasonable styles if they can't guarantee which elements content 
> writers will choose for their caption.  Imagine designing a CMS 
> template with some default styles for figure and caption, the CSS in 
> the template would have to deal with so many possible element choices 
> just for the caption, it'll be difficult to get it right and test 
> everything.
This does make sense. Would be really hard, for sure.
> There are only 2 sensible options for element choices: <legend> or 
> introducing a new element.  Using dt/dd is *not* and was never a 
> sensible choice for figure, and the idea must be dropped.
As caption and legend have much too many backwards compatibility issues, 
the only possible solution is either a new element or dropping the whole 
figure-thing. The second thing should really be taken into account. 
Better no syntax than bad syntax :)

What tag-titles could be used to mark the captions up? I thought of 
<desc> or <description> (first is better). Does not seem to be taken, 
but I don't know whether it is as intuitive. (But I as a German, who 
can't speak English very well, would search for "html5 image 
description" next after "html5 caption".)

MfG Nikita Popov