Adoption agency terminology

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#adoptionAgency uses slightly 
inconsistent terminology for relative positioning, which makes the text 
slightly harder to read than necessary (especially if you're 
implementing in a language with lists ordered like [newest; older; ...; 
oldest] so you have to mentally flip everything backwards and 
occasionally get it wrong).

List of active formatting elements: last, end, start, after.
Stack of open elements: topmost, lower, bottom, up to, prior to, after, 
more deeply nested.

A related issue is that "list" and "stack" sound like different data 
structures but actually seem to be very similar (and neither is a list 
or a stack, since they occasionally require random access). But I like 
that difference since it provides a clear distinction between the two 
objects and prevents confusion.

I think it would be helpful to consistently use horizontal terminology 
for the list (like what it says already) and vertical terminology for 
the stack (so change "prior to" to "above", and "after" to "below", and 
remove the "more deeply nested" parenthetical since it should be clear 
what "below" means).

-- 
Philip Taylor
pjt47@cam.ac.uk

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2008 23:17:38 UTC