3.11 Lists Review Comments

3.11 Lists – Review Notes

3.11.1 The ol element

"If the start attribute is present, user agents 
must parse it as an integer in order to determine 
the attribute's value.  The default value, used 
if the attribute is missing or if the value 
cannot be converted to a number according to the referenced algorithm, is 1."

The start attribute was deprecated in HTML 
4.01.  See 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/attributes.html>http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/attributes.html. 


(Note – I found this and the related table on 
elements among the most useful documents in the 
HTML 4.01 collection.  Has any thought been given 
to preparing something comparable for HTML 5?)

"The first item in the list has the ordinal value 
given by the 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#ol>ol element's 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#start0>start 
attribute, unless that 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#li>li element 
has a 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#value>value 
attribute with a value that can be successfully 
parsed, in which case it has the ordinal value 
given by that <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#value>value attribute."

The value attribute was also deprecated in HTML 4.01.  See above reference.

Given that both the start attribute of the ol 
element and the value attribute of the li element 
were deprecated in HTML 4.01, what is the 
compelling case for resurrecting them?

3.11.3 The li element

"When 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#determining1>used 
as an inline-level content container, the list 
item represents a single 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#paragraph>paragraph. "

What happens when an li element's content is 
comprised text of more than one paragraph?   That 
situation is not clear to me given this rule.

Again, the value attribute is referenced, although deprecated in 4.01.

3.11.4 The dl element

Typo in the "Content model" text:  " Zero or more 
groups each consisting of one or more 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#dt>dt elements 
followed by one or mode 
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#dd>dd 
elements."  Should be "…one or MORE dd elements".

In the second dt/dd example, <dfn> is not 
explained and does not occur previously within 
the list context.  Is there some way it could be 
at least partially explained in this context?

3.11.5 The dt element / 3.11.6 The dd element

I don't see the correlation between dt/dd in the 
dl context and dt/dd in the dialog context.  Is 
there any possibility that the dialog child 
members could be called something else?  I fear 
it's going to confuse some authors.  And what 
does someone do about marking up a dialogue in 
which there are more than two speakers 
(oxymoronic, I know, but there will be authors 
out there who will probably seek to use the 
dialog element to describe any multi-person 
exchange)?  How will you alternate between more than two speakers?



Debi Orton / oradnio@gmail.com

Received on Monday, 16 July 2007 03:44:33 UTC