[whatwg] Editorial comment r/e summary element

Bruce Lawson brucel at opera.com
Tue Sep 20 05:49:14 PDT 2011


Fair dames and damsels of the list

Consider  
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/interactive-elements.html#the-summary-element:  
"The summary element represents a summary, caption, or legend for the rest  
of the contents of the summary element's parent details element, if any."

I read "if any" to mean there may or may not be "a summary, caption or  
legend".

However, a questioner to HTML5 Doctor believes that <summary> can be used  
outside <details>, reading "if any" to sugest that there may not be a   
"summary element's parent details element".

(She wants to use <summary> at the top of an article to summarise its  
contents, because the ambiguous prose I quote suggests that a parent  
details element is optional).

Can we remove this ambiguity? "The summary element represents an optional  
summary, caption, or legend for the rest of the contents of the summary  
element's parent details element" would work.

bruce

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