Re: DogFood, take 2

Sam Ruby wrote:
> It might be worth reviewing the changes I made (had to make?) as these may 
> surface use cases that the specification may wish to cater to (or not).
> [...]
> I do think all this needs to be rethought if there is a desire for people 
> to adopt html5 and produce conformant content.

Just for fun, I a ran a recent page from my blog through the HTML5 mode of 
the conformance checker:

<http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fprojectcerbera.com%2Fblog%2F2007%2F12&parser=html5>

Overall, I am happy with the results. But there are two messages which I am 
unhappy with. I think Sam has a point that some of the restrictions in HTML5 
are unhelpful.

[[[
Error: Element acronym not allowed as child of element li in this context.
]]]

<acronym title> seems fine to me.

* UAs already support <acronym title>.
* Replacing every <acronym title> on the web with <abbr title> would 
probably cost a lot of money.
* It doesn't improve the user experience.
* The lacking support for <abbr title> in IE6 would harm the user 
experience, although by a gradually diminishing amount.

[[[
Error: Element u not allowed as child of element samp in this context.
]]]

<samp><u> seems fine to me.

* UAs already support <samp><u>.
* Replacing <samp><u> with <samp><span class> or with <samp><font style> 
does not improve the markup, afaict.
* The additional filesize slightly reduces the efficiency and readability of 
the markup.
* Making underline possible only with CSS prevents useful styling being 
available if the author stylesheet is not used.

I propose:

* Allow <acronym title>.
* Allow <samp><u>.
* Allow <acronym> without title. Maybe it can help pronounciation in 
text-to-speech software? I'm unaware of anything currently doing that, 
though.
* Allow <u> anywhere similar elements are allowed (such as <i> and <b>). 
Underlined text may be useful in other situations.

--
Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
Collections of Interesting Data Tables
<http://sitesurgeon.co.uk/tables/> 

Received on Thursday, 13 December 2007 03:55:53 UTC