Re: 'role' should be property

Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> On 2007-06-01 01:10:50 +0200 Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>> On May 31, 2007, at 4:05 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>>> On 2007-05-31 18:41:20 +0200 Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>>>> Can we please take the discussion of changing CSS somewhere that  it  is 
>>>> more on-topic, such as <www-style@w3.org>?
>>>
>>> Right. But. I don't think you are in support of the role attribute?  So if 
>>> we agree that it belongs in CSS instead, then we can skip the  role debate 
>>> here also?
>>>
>>> Also, Dmitry says «focus on 'class'» and «do less, but add more  meaning 
>>> to the little you do». I think you say the same.
>>
>> I'm personally not in favor of either the role attribute in markup,  or a 
>> hypothetical role CSS property.
> 
> But then think about something more relevant for you, think about the scope
> and headers attributes of TABLE. Dmitry himself in of his letters use
a table
> to illustrate his point.
> 
> In the [parallel] thread about the headers attribute, you raised the question
> about what implementations should be required to support. Well ... I
am not
> saying that it is possible, but _if_ it were possible to move the
things that
> scope and headers do *out* of HTML and into CSS, then suddenly it
became much
> simpler to create HTML5 [conforming] UAs, and to differentiate the UAs
- they
> do not all have to support all CSS properties.)

   Explain this to me: How does performing the same action in a new
language in a document separate from your original source document make
it easier to do a task than simply revising the language of the original
source document? Exactly where are the repetitive semantics that justify
 a separate CSS-like language in the first place, and how does one bind
to the HTML elements in question without generating markup for binding
that would be roughly equivalent to the amount of markup created with
|role| or |class|? After all, |scope| and |header|, when they need to be
declared, often apply to a relatively small percentage of the elements
in an HTML document.

   Keep in mind that this may not just complicate the UA, but UA add-ons
such as those in Firefox.

> I have man more points to make [about] scope and headers. I make them in the
> [parallel] thread. I'll just mention that it would be logical for
headers to
> not only take ID's as values, but also class.

   Can you give a markup example as to how that would be beneficial?

Received on Monday, 4 June 2007 10:59:23 UTC