Re: Use the role-attribute instead of predefined class names

Matthew Raymond schreef:
>    Personally, if we're moving everything to XML, I don't see the point.
> You can just use attributes and elements from a new namespace. The
> |role| attribute just shift semantics to a lower structural priority
> (from elements and attributes to attribute values).
>   

In case of <section>, the advantage is in my opinion that instead of the 
fact that it’s a section being implicit (like in <article>, <nav>, etc), 
it’s good to have it explicitly being a section, and then specify the 
type of section on the role attribute, as a means of sub-classing it. 
The way it is currently, which elements are exactly section types and 
thus how they interact with headings is extremely unclear to me.

There have been arguments that predefined classnames can’t be used for 
this purpose because implementing specific rendering for them would 
break existing pages. However, I’d say role would eventually probably 
have the same problem (except for in the initial specification).

Then again, I suppose it would depend on the exact definition in the 
specification. If e.g. non-namespaced values were reserved for the HTML 
specification, and authors were discouraged to invent any new role 
attributes individually and to use the class attribute instead, I think 
that problem might be avoided.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.