Re: 'HTML 5' and some poem markup?

Olaf,


An attemp to summarize what has been said on the mailing-list about  
poem markup. I may have missed some arguments. I think it would be  
worthwhile to create a page for it on the wiki.
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML

Olaf, you are welcome to do that. The page will contain…

* syntaxes with full examples, and in each syntax cases. An analysis  
of benefits/troubles
     * for authoring
     * for User agent readers, browsers
     * for Search Engines spiders
     * for styling with CSS
     * for extracting the information

That would help to keep a record of these discussions. Poem/Lyrics  
are so common that they will pop up again, specifically when samp,  
kbd, var (technical terms) are part of html.

==================
# Proposals
## Specific Markup

Dr. Olaf Hoffmann (5 oct. 2007 - 22:37) :
> Some useful elements (block elements):
>
> 'poem' - container for a poem, similar to a section,
>          may contain header, footer, div, p (maybe
>          useful for modern poetry), strophe, line, h
> 'strophe' - stanza or strophe of a classical poem,
>             may contain either line or
>             (inline elements or CDATA)
> 'line' - a line or row of a poem, may contain inline
>          elements or CDATA
> 'h' - a heading of a poem


## Using RDFa



## Using role attribute

Philip Taylor (Webmaster) (6 oct. 2007 - 01:20) :
> (a) by overloading existing elements
> and clarifying the nature of the overload through the
> "class" (or *"role") attribute, as in
>
> <div class="stanza">
> ...
> </div>
>
> or
>
> <div *role="stanza">
> ...
> </div>

Dr. Olaf Hoffmann (6 oct. 2007 - 03:19) :
> <div role="poem:stanza"> ... </div>



## Using already existing markup

Ian Hickson (6 oct. 2007 - 02:06) :
> Specifically:
>
> - the heading of a poem is marked up using <header> and the
>    appropriate level of <hX> elements,
>
> - the stanzas of poems written in the classical form are given by <p>
>    elements, with line breaks indicated by <br> elements (one of  
> the few
>    allowed uses of <br>).
>
> - the stanzas of freeform poems are given by <pre> elements.


## Using it for songs

Doug Schepers (6 oct. 2007 - 05:05) :
> Including lyrics in the category of poetry does make explicit a  
> couple of interesting technological/processing aspects, thought:
>
> 1) guitar tabs (or other musical notation) could be integrated  
> using ruby;
>
> 2) timed text (as for karaoke) could be used to add meter and  
> rhythm to the presentation style (think SMIL or HTML+Time).




# Some issues
## headings

Henri Sivonen (5 oct. 2007 - 23:47) :
> <h> would not be backwards-compatible and you'd have to define  
> interaction with the <h1> through <h6>. HTML5 specifies <h1> in  
> such a way that can used the way <h> can be used in XHTML2.

Dr. Olaf Hoffmann (6 oct. 2007 - 03:19) :
> The main problem with hX is, that the heading of the poem is
> not directly related to the cascade of headings outside, therefore
> it is more useful without the X as for almost any section too.


## using br for verse

Dr. Olaf Hoffmann (6 oct. 2007 - 03:19) :
> I'm writing both, (fictional, technical and scientific) texts with  
> paragraphs
> and poems too - not a good choice to mix up paragraphs with stanzas
> and line breaks with lines - one cannot use <br>some poem line</br>
> Therefore br is obviously not a markup for a line, just a line
> break, that is simple to see...


## using li for verse

Gregory J. Rosmaita (6 oct. 2007 - 05:39) :
> why not a containing element that indicates a line of poetry, much
> as <LI> and </LI> indicate the beginning and end of a list item?



## Free form poem using pre or graphical instance.

Gregory J. Rosmaita (6 oct. 2007 - 05:39) :
> 2) PRE does not express any meaningful semantics, nor does it lend
> structure -- other than the visual illusion of structure -- to the  
> text
> contained in a PRE container...

Karl Dubost (8 oct. 2007 - 11:11) :
> Example of a visual poem
> La colombe poignardée et le jet d'eau
> Picture from the calligrammes by Guillaume apollinaire, NRF,  
> Gallimard, Trente-septième édition, 1925
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Oct/0020


# Some questions

Henri Sivonen (5 oct. 2007 - 23:47) :
> How would [search engines spiders] be helped by poem-specific  
> semantics?

James Graham (6 oct. 2007 - 03:49) :
> I don't understand how readers would benefit from a poem element.  
> Is there some special UA behavior you imagine? What are the  
> corresponding possibilities for a <poem> element that would allow  
> similar improvements for the user experience?



-- 
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead
   QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/
      *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***

Received on Monday, 8 October 2007 02:32:53 UTC