Re: (phrase extensions and bidirectional text orverride <span> and <bdo>) part of my review of 3.12 Phrase elements

Robert Burns writes:

> phrase extensions and bidirectional text orverride <span> and  <bdo>)
> part of my review of 3.12 Phrase elements
> 
> Span SPAN:
> 
> The <span> element makes mention of special meaning to @title when
> used with <dfn> but nothing else is said about that here. An example
> and explanation would be helpful.

True, but the mention of "dfn" is a link to what the spec says about the
<dfn> element, where it is explained.

> Consider requiring at least one of the global attributes to ensure
> <span> has some specified semantics associated with it.

Why?  There are things that can be done with a <span> that has no
attributes, for example:

* <span> can delimit a term which is defined elsewhere in the document
  (with a <dfn>).

* Even without a class or id attribute, <span> can still be selected in
  CSS for special styling, for example with this HTML:

    <p class="fruit"><span>Apples</span>, <span>bananas</span>, and
    <span>cherries</span> are all fruit.</p>

  those <span> elements can be distinguished with something like:

    .fruit > span { color: lime; }

  without requiring the class to be applied to each <span> individually.

Smylers

Received on Thursday, 26 July 2007 21:16:21 UTC