[html4all] Summary Automatically Generated by User Agent

[Laura Carlson]

Hello Everyone,

Smylers and Simon Pieters have been brainstorming a table summary
solution where the summary is automatically generated by the user
agent. To quote [1]:

"HTML 5 defines which headers apply to which cells, and obviously a
user-agent knows which cells are merged, so possibly there could be an
algorithmic way of generating descriptions of table structures for any
(or at least a large proportion of) data tables. A user-agent could
have a 'describe table structure' feature which is independent of an
author providing a good (or indeed any) summary.

"In terms of getting the information to those users who need it, this
may have more success than engaging authors to write good summaries:
user-agent developers seem on average more likely to follow the HTML 5
spec than most authors, and there are fewer of them.

"If this were possible it would reduce the number of tables which
require a handwritten summary, reducing the burden on authors."
unquote.

Thoughts?

Thread starts at:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jun/thread.html#msg684

Best Regards,
Laura

-- 
Laura L. Carlson