[Bug 11467] abbreviating navigation tag to "nav" is inconsistent with spec

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11467

Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3cbug@gmail.com> changed:

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--- Comment #3 from Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3cbug@gmail.com> 2010-12-05 00:25:44 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #0)
> The shortening of "navigation" into the slang term "nav" seems arbitrary, since
> other tags in the html5 spec are not swapped for shorter nicknames.

There are lots of tags in HTML whose names are abbreviated, and have been since
HTML first existed -- e.g., <p> and <a>.  <bdi> and <figcaption> were invented
by HTML5 and have abbreviated names too.  The same for the attributes dirname,
itemprop, itemref, max, min, pubdate, srcdoc, and srclang.  AFAICT, new
elements/attributes are more likely to be given abbreviated names if the full
version is too long and the abbreviation would not be confusing.  "nav" is a
common abbreviation for "navigation", commonly found in HTML class names.

> *header* should become *head*

Already used.

> *footer* must be changed to *foot*

"footer" is short enough, and should match "header" (since "head" is used).

> *article* becomes *art*

"art" would be unclear -- it's not obviously an abbreviation for "article".

> *section* becomes *sec* 

Would be reasonably clear, but "section" is fairly short already, so it doesn't
need to be abbreviated.  "navigation" is much longer.  In pre-HTML5 HTML, I
count only one element that's as long as <navigation> (<blockquote>), but eight
that are as long as or longer than <section>: <address>, <caption>, <colgroup>,
<fieldset>, <noscript>, <optgroup>, <textarea>, plus of course <blockquote>. 
Eight letters seems to be about the upper limit for HTML elements, excepting
two that are forced to be long because they're two words jammed together and
would become less comprehensible if abbreviated (<blockquote> and
<figcaption>).

> and *html* can be shortened to *htm,* or perhaps just *h.*

"html" predated HTML5 and cannot possibly be changed at this point.

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Received on Sunday, 5 December 2010 00:25:47 UTC