Re: About XHTML 2.0

On Sat, 21 May 2005, Dan Brickley wrote:

>
> * webmaster@eammm.com <webmaster@eammm.com> [2005-05-18 23:21+0000]
>>
>>
>> I was reading about the changes to be made in XHTML 2.0 and I do have
>> one suggestion:
>>
>> It says you're going to replace <hr /> with <seperator />, I think that
>> would waste too much time to type, and I suggest changing it to <sep />
>> You get your point accross, but with less letters to type.
>> This also helps those web designers that can't spell well, some people
>> might misspell "seperator" and get errors on their page.  "sep" is much
>> easier to remember and type (and spell).
>
> I agree, since my first reaction to your mail was "oh, that's not how
> you spell 'separator'. Or is it? I'm not sure....".
> So then I looked in dictionary.com and found
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=seperator
> "1 entry found for seperator"  in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary
>
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=separator has 4 entries though,
> and http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-structural.html#sec_8.9. confirms
> it is 'separator'.
>
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22xhtml+2.0%22+seperator+hr
> ...also has a good number of people writing 'seperator'.
>
> This could be really confusing I think...
>
> <sep/> seems a good idea... (though conceptually seems close to 'div').
>
> Perhaps <gap/> would work?
>
> Dan

Hmm, <gap/> seems like an awful idea - it lessens the meaning of the tag. 
A separator need not be a visual gap, it could be anything the user agent 
defines it to be (or the author styles it to be). A screen reader would 
maybe interpret a separator as a pause or playing a giving sound or 
similar. Sticking with separator as a semantic element is a good idea 
because it thoroughly describes the element. But I do agree that spelling 
the tag out as <sep/> is a good idea to, for the reasons mentioned 
earlier.

All this assumes of course that we need the element - something 
in which I am not really sure of. Grouping elements and using sections for 
related content will implicitly define a separator between them, which is 
what I assume you meant by comparing <sep/> with <div>?



MVH
Christian

Received on Sunday, 22 May 2005 21:50:05 UTC