


From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 16:09:00 -0400 (EDT)
To: Phill Jenkins <pjenkins@us.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0106031606150.2127-100000@tux.w3.org>
On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Phill Jenkins wrote:

  > It was a design decision, and until then there was no reason why a
  > label could not have said that it applied to two or more elements
  My question is that I haven't found any rationale for the design decision.
  So when was this decision made?  If there was no reason before, what was
  the reason that came along?
You would have to ask the HTML working group.

  > There is a different semantic attached to headers.
  But basically I don't see any difference between the HEADERS attribute
  associating the cells with headings and the FOR attribute associating
  LABELs with INPUTs.
Headers are explicitly part of a table - they are expected to be labelling
each of a set of items, where that set is those things in the same column/row
(or column/row group). Label is expected to label one thing. These semantics
are defined in the HTML specification, which is precisely the authorative
specification of the semantics of HTML elements and attributes (plus a little
bit which is the specification of the syntax).

  > There may be cases where the same thing is needed without
  > adding content - this is why there is a title attribute.
  I'm not adding content. Adding a title attribute is, in a sense, adding
  content and semantics into one via the natural language, especially in
  Jim's example of title="Tax payers's W2 Gross".  Label is an association
  while title is additional information.


Received on Sunday, 3 June 2001 16:09:00 GMT
