Re: 'HTML 5' and some poem markup?

On 2007-10-09 13:06:38 +0200 "Philip Taylor (Webmaster)" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk> wrote:

> Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> 
>> Another area would be Scripts for TV, Film or Theatre.
> 
> Which, I would respectfully suggest, just goes to shew
> that no matter how Universes of Discourse one sets out
> to address, someone will adduce yet another.  Ladies
> and Gentlemen, this is getting ridiculous :

I don't know how much you add by saying so.

> HTML should
> consist of just sufficient elements to markup up basic
> texts and forms,

You say «basic texts». Poetry constitutes 'basic texts'. Unless you meant 'basic prose'. 

But the more important problem is: What is a 'text' - in HTML? More important than a spesific POEM element, HTML lacks a element by which we can use to mark up something as «a text». To add a <TEXT> element, would do just that. We then could also avoid the problem of whether to pick the POEM or PROSE element for a text that makes use of both genres. TEXT would serve to collect something as a whole. Tell me why that would be ridiculous! If we have TEXT, we can then further use some attribute to specify what kind of text it is - for classification purposes - which could be used in search engines etc.

The alternative would be to have something like <DIV role=text>. Entirely possible, but not very elegant, given how often one would like to present something as a text. It would be like having this construct: <GENERIC role=nongeneric>. And also, since role=text would just be the "top level" classification, it would become even less elegant as soon as you want to specify that it is not just any text - but spesificly a poetry - <DIV role=text:poem>.

Also, if the goal is to minimise the need for new micro-level elements, then we need to have good macro-level elements - such as <TEXT> with attributes. Having a good "this-is-a-text" element, should help keeping the authors satisfied with the tools/elements at disposal (i.e. satisfied with the those elements that HTML at any given time operates with.) 

> and an extensibility mechanism (such
> as RDFa, as proposed by Peter Krantz) should be used
> to add support for specialised Universes of Discourse.

Let all poets become RDFa experts. And in the same go, let them use XML instead of text/html as well. By all means, RDFa sounds as great thing - and I really hope we can have support for it in HTML5/text and not only in HTML5/xml. But we can make much better and more correct use of RDF if we also have the right HTML elements.

Tina Holmboe proposed to the XHTML2 wg «that the role attribute should NOT be allowed on the DIV and SPAN elements in XHTML 2 in order to encourage best practice, and rather be reserved for elements with acknowledged semantic interpretation as fallback content.» And I think there is very much to what she said there.

Holmboe: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/2007Aug/0020.html
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2007 01:29:33 UTC