LwDITA simple table & customer requirement for table captions

Dear Lightweight DITA subcommittee members,

I’d like to ask for your advice in a specific use case with LwDITA content, namely a requirement for numbered table captions. The content we are  primarily working on is different kinds of instructions and user manuals. In that kind of context, it is quite a common need to have captions and numbering for tables too in the final deliverables. The customers may have the same tradition in sales-phase content  as well (e.g. brochures, product guides).

We have had a few alternatives in mind to achieve this goal, but they all seem to come with a downside.

Without going too much into detail at this point, I’d like to ask you how would you advise in this situation on a general level - as the subcommittee  is likely to get this question from elsewhere as well. What would you recommend?

Especially those of you who have been involved in the development of LwDITA a longer period of time and know the background and development history  of the simple table, can you please explain the reasoning behind including elements for title and description for the figure element but not for simple table? (In the current LwDITA draft, there are a couple of items where elements belonging to the same group  of elements seem to be handled differently.)

Thank you very much in advance!

Warmest regards (from not so warm winter wonderland),

--
Ullakaisa Kalander  Information Architect, Information Services  Citec Oy Ab
P.O. Box 109  FI-65101 Vaasa  Finland
Mobile: +358 50 3828 192
E-mail:

www.citec.com