- From: John Lewis <lewi0371@mrs.umn.edu>
- Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 19:41:40 -0500
- To: www-html@w3.org
Daniel wrote on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 at 1:11:02 PM:
> I strongly recommend (a) a clarification of the definition of the l
> element
I think the definition should say something more like this:
The l element represents a semantic line of text (e.g., a line of
verse or a line of computer code). It is intended as a structured
replacement for the br element.
When visually represented, the l element should start on a new
line and have a line break at the end. Whether the line should
wrap or not depends on styling properties of the element.
Which is in my opinion much clearer. The l element replaces the br
element, but it isn't the same thing. The current text could be
mistaken for saying that the l element is just a renamed, slightly
different br element. I also think the word "sub-paragraph" is
confusing and even a little misleading.
> (b) another name, this one being too confusing with 1 and i, and
> intrinsicly too confusing because a "line" has multiple meanings in
> English having different visual rendering (and that's not the case
> in other languages).
I spent a good while looking for and trying to think of a replacement
name without success. As far as I can tell, there is no word that
means what line means well enough to replace line. Hopefully I'm
mistaken.
The only element name variation I thought of is "sl", but that's
longer and theoretically the "l" could still be confusing. On the
bright side it couldn't be mistaken for the i element. (Although I
still consider it unlikely that someone could confuse the l element
and the i element, considering that one is inline, the other is block,
and how incredibly different their normal application is. Still,
removing the possibility is a good thing.)
I'm personally not opposed to changing the name to pretty much any one
or two letter name, but considering how often it will be used in
certain documents I'd much prefer a short name over a long name.
--
John Lewis
Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2003 20:42:41 UTC