Re: Ruby extension: empty ruby text

Richard Ishida, Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:54:19 +0000:
> On 25/02/2013 23:31, fantasai wrote:
>> One thing I had suggested was to do the somewhat
>> confusing thing and make the <ruby> start tag
>> optional. This shortens markup slightly to
>> 
>>    <rb>B<rb>B<rt>a<rt>a</ruby>
>> 
>> instead of (for the same DOM):
>> 
>>    <ruby><rb>B<rb>B<rt>a<rt>a</ruby>
> 
> However, if you do that as a matter of course, and then someone comes 
> along and wants to style the whole page so that, say, all base text 
> is hidden for accessibility reasons, then they wont be able to style 
> the initial base text in each ruby element.  I think it's better to 
> recommend that each item in a ruby element start with either <rb>, 
> <rt> or <rtc>.

An optional start tag would not mean that the <ruby> element would be 
optional - the HTML parser would generate it. Fantasai’s proposal only 
means that the <ruby> element would be auto-generated - and thus *would 
be entirely possible to style* for accessibility reasons and any other 
reason. Since it would probably be the presence of a <rb> that caused 
the <ruby> to be auto-generated, fantasai’s proposal would implicitly 
be strong recommendation to use <rb>.
-- 
leif halvard silli