Currently, there you can use only text in @title. Not even line breaks are possible (at least I don't know any reliably way). That is sometimes not enough. Also with 'abbr' elements you either insert @title only for the 1st element (results in only 1st one with a tooltip) or need to specify @title every time you use 'abbr'. That is somewhat redundant.
2. What is the feature you are suggesting to help solve it?
Look at this:
- Code: Select all
<head/>
<body>
<p><span title="url(#ref-cow)">Cows</span> are cute animals.</p>
<p>The more prominent members of the <abbr title="url(#ref-whatwg)">WHATWG</abbr> have all joined the HTML working group. We have invited the HTML working group chairmen to the <abbr title="url(#ref-whatwg)">WHATWG</abbr> as well, in the spirit of cooperation.</p>
</body>
<foot>
<ref id="ref-cow">
<p>Cattle, colloquially referred to as cows, are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae.</p>
<div><img src="cow.jpg" alt="A cow"/></div>
</ref>
<ref id="ref-whatwg">
<p>The <b>Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group</b>, or <b>WHATWG</b>, is a community of people interested in evolving HTML and related technologies. </p>
</ref>
<foot>
i.e. <foot> element will have blocks of HTML markup that are referenced by their @id using @title atribute (or there was 'xref' or something like that in HTML5 before).
3. What is the processing model for that feature, including error handling? This should be very clear, including things such as event timing if the feature involves events, how to create graphs representing the data in the case of semantic proposals, etc.
I'm not sure about this yet, since I'm just interested would this be nice to have in HTML 5 or some HTML 6+ in the future.
Some elements are meaningless in this 'tooltip', like 'a' or @title, since you can't hover them anyway.
'foot' and its children must not be visible of course. Also CSS styling apllied to 'ref' element must be applied to this advanced tooltip (background, borders, etc.).
4. Why do you think browsers would implement this feature?
I'm not good at this...
Why do you think authors would use this feature?
Ease of authoring and it's not as limiting as @title.
What evidence is there that this feature is desparately needed?
Currently there are often exist JS/CSS implementation for this. JS version is less accessible and CSS has the same problem as abbr@title - you need to specify it multiple times if you want more than 1 tooltip on the same abreviation.
So, I'm asking whether it is needed and possible to implement?
p.s. English isn't my 1st language so text above may (or may not) be far from gramatically correct.