Tom McDonnell wrote:

> Having reviewed the latest Working Draft, I felt I must comment on the 
> Embedding Attribute Collection.
> 
> I don't see any need for the collection, the <object> element already 
> provides this functionality. Take the first example in the working draft:
> 
> <p src="holiday.png" type="image/png">
>     <span src="holiday.gif" type="image/gif">
>         An image of us on holiday.
>     </span>
> </p>
> 
> Shouldn't this be done:
> 
> <object data="holiday.png" type="image/png">
>   <object data="holiday.gif" type="image/gif">
>     <p>An image of us on holiday</p>
>   </object>
> </object>
> 
> Ditto can be applied to the table example.
> 
> I really feel the working drafts example is misuse of <p> element; the 
> collection is blurring the lines of the purpose of elements. The generic 
> <object> element was designed encapsulate fallback logic, so I cannot 
> understand why this new attribute collection has been introduced to serve 
> the same purpose. I suggest it be dropped.

Whether it is a misuse of the <p> element depends upon whether the 
image in question is logigically equivalent to a paragraph, which it 
probably is not. However consider the following:

<li src="poolside.png" type="image/png">
  <span src="poolside.gif" type="image/gif">
     Lounging at poolside
  </span>
</li>

as a list item in a list of things the document author did on her 
holiday. Compared to:

<li>
  <object data="poolside.png" type="image/png">
    <object data="poolside.gif" type="image/gif">
      Lounging at poolside
    </object>
  </object>
</li>

there is one less element being used to achieve the same effect and 
there is no doubt in my example that it legiiamately is a list item.
An even more compact example would be:

<li src="poolside" type="image/png,image/gif;q=0.1">
   Lounging at poolside
</li>

As it takes advantage of the extenstion of the  type parameter from a 
single Content type (as per HTML4/XHTML1) to a list of content types to 
render the example more compact. The equivalent using object would be:

<li>
  <object data="poolside" type="image/png,image/gif;q=0.1">
    Lounging at poolside
  </object>
</li>

Personally I am in favor of making it clear that the object element is 
intended only for the more complictaed sorts of emebeddings that 
benefit from archive, content-length, declare, param, and/or standby.