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I have an open bug on redefining dt and dd for use as caption and content in Figure. See http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7657. Rather than reuse dt/dd, which can cause considerable confusion, a new element to act as figure caption would be a better option. There wouldn't be any problems with legacy browsers, or any confusion about how dt/dd are to used in Figure as compared to definition list (dl) (see discussion at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Sep/0575.html). In addition, this approach wouldn't impact on any existing application, and should help keep the Figure element as clean as possible (consisting of the contents of the figure, however they are defined, and the figure caption). There have been several names suggested, including c, figcapt, and so on. I have no preferences as to name.
This has been considered many times. Defining a new element has a number of disadvantages. It means yet another number for "label"/"heading"/"caption"/"legend"-like semantics (we're up to about 18 already depending on how you count them), which will lead to at least as much confusion as reusing <dt>, if not considerably more, as people try to remember when to use <caption> and when to use <legend> and when to use <figcaption> (or is it <figlegend>), etc. It also means more awkward parsing decisions, as well as generally being quite ugly. IMHO <legend> would be preferable to a new element, even with it's temporary issues with parsing in legacy browsers.
Even though there is an Issue on this item, I want this bug kept open, as this is the only way I can record links or other new information associated with both bug and issue. There is a discussion on dt/dd in the WhatWG pertinent to this topic. http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-October/023276.html I would be happy to "close" this bug, if I can add information to the Issue. Only HTML WG members can add information to the an issue.
(In reply to comment #2) > There is a discussion on dt/dd in the WhatWG pertinent to this topic. > > http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-October/023276.html I'll note for the record here that this relates to Tracker issue 83: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/83 I added a note to that issue with a link the archived message above. > I would be happy to "close" this bug, if I can add information to the Issue. > Only HTML WG members can add information to the an issue. You can add information to a bug even if it's been marked resolved. To have information added to a Tracker issue associated with a particular bug, you can post a comment to the bug and request that it also be added to the Tracker issue. And for for a Tracker issue with the issue number NN, you can post a message with the string "issue-NN" in the message subject or in any part of the message body, and a link to the message will be added to the issue record for that issue. And if you want some information from such a message added as a note to an issue, or even added to the Description for an issue (so it'll appear more prominently), and you indicate that in the message, then I or one of the other people in the group with Tracker write perms can add it there.
This item was fixed as part of the issue resolution process.