> Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Chris Ridpath" <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca>
>> To: "Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG" <rscano@iwa-italy.org>; "Jens Meiert"
>> <jens.meiert@erde3.com>; <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
>> Cc: <www-html@w3.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 3:14 PM
>> Subject: Re: [#293] Summary for tables
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>>  <table type="layout" />
>>> 
>>> The TABLE element does not have a TYPE attribute in HTML4 so, as
>>> Roberto suggested, this would cause problems.
>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#edef-TABLE 
>>> 
>>> Even if approved by the XHTML group this would cause problems with
>>> HTML validator tools.
>> 
>> Following your suggestion, an attribute that i think could be use is
>> the "title" attribute. As you know the screen readers works on the
>> table with the summary attribute. If we create an instruction like
>> this:
>> 
>> <table title="layout" summary="...">
> 

The whole direction of XHTML is away from presentational markup.
Hijacking the semantics of existing attributes to create hacky
workarounds so you can use table layouts with a "clear" conscience is
not a good idea. 

The only suggestion I am going to make on this is that you could
possibly suggest the empty summary attribute, e.g. summary="" implies
that the table is used for layout.

-- 
BenM
http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/