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Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-header-element Comment: header lacks footer’s reference to scoping (nearest ancestor sectioning element/body) Posted from: 221.191.254.72 by w3.org@boblet.net
The footer element begins “The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element”. The header element doesn’t mention this. Either both elements should refer to it or neither should. As this ties into the somewhat complex subjects of sectioning and outlines, it may be better to remove the text and add a new field to the elements’ metadata. Something like “Scope: nearest ancestor sectioning element, or entire page”? Alternatively this text could be added at the end of the description as text or as a note. While header/footer scope should be obvious inside sectioning elements, I think that it applying to the entire page won’t be. It’s association with section/article may lead some authors to assume if they want to use header they need a containing section/article too. HTH
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: The distinction is intentional, and reflects differing authoring styles when dealing with headers and footers. The "semantic" part of the <header> is the <h1>s and so forth inside it, and that is what is associated with the nearest ancestor section.