Re: Subheadings desired in XHTML 2.0

Hello Etan,
Wednesday, November 6, 2002, 5:50:41 PM, you wrote:

> How does XHTML 2.0 deal with subheadings?

If I was to try to break down the meaning of subheading I would end up
with something like "a heading of something that has a heading." Is
that what you mean by subheading?

Subheadings are headings for a fraction of a document, so a subheading
would be a heading inside a section element. Further levels of
subheadings, if required, would be nested deeper in sections.

> How should XHTML deal with subheadings?

I see no disadvantages to combining heading elements with section
elements.

> Do subheadings need a distinct element type?

I don't see any advantages to one.

> Should subheadings be children of headings rather than siblings of
> headings?

By forcing them to be children you force unnatural constraints on
document authors. For example,

  <h>Reasons for Something
  <sh>Reason</sh>
  </h>
  <p>Text text.</p>
  <sh>Reason</sh> <!-- Can't be child of heading because
                       of above paragraph. -->
  <p>Text text.</p>

At least in the common definition both of these sh elements are
subheads. In XHTML 2.0 I would write it as follows:

  <h>Reasons for Something</h>
  <section>
  <h>Reason</h>
  <p>Text text.</p>
  </section>
  <section>
  <h>Reason</h>
  <p>Text text.</p>
  </section>

If subheads needed to be children of headings then you couldn't have
more than one subheading per heading; kind of a strange restriction.

> Given an article with the main heading "Foo" and with the subheading
> "Bar", given the possibility of an element type 'sh' for
> subheadings, and assuming that the examples are valid, which of the
> following document fragments is most appropriate? Why is that?

I don't see any advantages to the distinct subheadings and I don't
think subheadings should be nested in other headings. That leaves
number four:

> <!-- begin 4 -->
> <h>Foo</h>
> <h>Bar</h>

-- 
John

Received on Saturday, 9 November 2002 05:20:34 UTC