Re: [whatwg] section 3 top headers

Shelley Powers wrote:
> you insert a section on the paragraph element, at the 
> same top level that you reference all HTML elements. Why did you plunk 
> the paragraph in as a separate section? And I'm also assuming I misread 
> the bit about other elements straddling paragraphs. I'm assuming you 
> don't mean that something like

Some specific suggestions for this section (mostly based on blog comments):

Possibly the term "paragraphs" should be changed, to prevent people 
confusing it with the paragraph (<p>) element. (Shelley suggested 
"structural blocks". I can't think of any particular suggestions). The 
"paragraphs" concept seems to be used in very few places, so it doesn't 
seem worth using a common term that people will already assume some 
(incorrect) meaning for.

The first paragraph of the "paragraphs" section should be explicit that 
this is a more general concept than just the <p> element. Perhaps a 
(non-normative) description like "A paragraph is defined here as a run 
of <a href>phrasing content</a>." would put people in the right frame of 
mind to read the rest of the section, so they don't think it's just 
talking about <p> elements.

The concept of "straddl[ing] paragraph boundaries" is non-obvious, and 
should be illustrated by examples. When it's first mentioned, the text 
should refer to the second and third examples later in the section, and 
the descriptions of those examples should explicitly say that the ins/a 
elements are straddling the boundaries.

-- 
Philip Taylor
pjt47@cam.ac.uk

Received on Sunday, 3 May 2009 20:17:45 UTC