- From: Rene Saarsoo <nene@triin.net>
- Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 00:00:08 +0300
- To: public-html@w3.org
It seems to me, that the ping-pong match doesn't show any signs of stopping... neither do bad subject lines :) First of all - it's pretty pointless to argue over one single proposed predefined class name. It's not the copyright class and how it's used, it's the principle, whether we should or should not have predefined class names at all. Here are my objections agains predefined class names: 1. Many sites use those class names for something else Although "copyright" is quite often used in accordance with the proposed spec, others are quite often used for other purposes. Especially ambiguos are the "note" and "issue", which could also refere to musical note or bank note; or issue of a newspaper. I also recorded uses like the following: <span class="note">Note:</span> you can also add the... <input type="text" size="30" max="50" name="firstname"> <span class="note">optional</span> 2. This is not a future-proof way to extend HTML Although at the moment we might find a set of classnames, for which we can be sure, that they are mostly used so, how we want them to be used, can we be sure, that when we need to add some more predefined class names in the future, then those won't introduce any problems? No, we can't. Every time we want to consider a new predefined class name, we have to go through the whole process again. 3. Making some class names special is confusing Suddenly all authors will need to remember, that there is this set of predefined class names, which differently from all the other meaningless class names have meaning. Currently there are only seven predefined class names, but in the future we might add a lot more. This complicates the class attribute and confuses developers. It's confusing when class names most of the time have no meaning what so ever, but someties do have a meaning. 4. Predefined class names are impossible to validate Clearly it would be helpful, if HTML validator would tell you, if you had misspelled the predefined classname, but because the normal class names are at the same namespace, every misspelled predefined class name becomes normal meaningless class name and can't be therefore detected by validator. I'll be waiting for counter-arguments from predefined class names supporters. -- Rene Saarsoo
Received on Sunday, 6 May 2007 20:59:27 UTC