HTML 3.2 PR - lists

Peter Flynn <pflynn@curia.ucc.ie> wrote:
>I think the W3C are to be congratulated on making this call for
>comments. I honestly never thought their members would allow it.
>[...]
>I think the inclusion of DIR and MENU is a crazy piece of pointless
>backward compatibility. They should be removed, or at the very least
>strongly deprecated - unless some browser plans to do something
>meaningful with them at last (any sign of this?)

	In HTMLPlus and the (expired) HTML 3.0 draft, MENU were to be
subsumed under UL by the addition of a PLAIN attribute and a WRAP
attritute with naming conventions of VERT (default) or HORIZ

	<MENU> comes <UL PLAIN> and <DIR> becomes <UL PLAIN WRAP=HORIZ>
as stated in the (expired) HTML 3.0 draft:

  MENU and DIR elements
  
   These elements are superceded by extensions to the UL element. User
   agents are advised to continue to support them for the sake of legacy
   documents. Both MENU and DIR consist of one or more LI elements,
   similar to UL. MENU lists are typically rendered without bullets in a
   more compact style than UL. You can get the same effect with <UL
   PLAIN>. DIR lists are used to present lists of items containing up to
   20 characters each. Items in a DIR list are arranged in columns. You
   can get the same effect with <UL PLAIN WRAP=HORIZ>.


	Repeated requests in this list, accompanied by sound reasoning,
that at least PLAIN be restored in the W3C's HTML 3.2 DTD have met with
unresponsiveness, and, utterly simple though it would be for all clients
to implement, it appears to be in the same category as FIG.  At one point,
it was stated here by the chairman of the W3C ERB that the PLAIN attribute
is unnecessary because the MENU element is still in the HTML 3.2 DTD.

	Under these (unfortunate) circumstances, MENU should not be
dropped.  I've never seen DIR actually used in public HTML documents,
so it's retention may not be as important.

				Fote

=========================================================================
 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 MACRIDES@SCI.WFBR.EDU         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
=========================================================================

Received on Tuesday, 12 November 1996 17:36:07 UTC