Re: <dialog>

(trimming cc list)

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
> 
> i proposed a single letter element -- D -- for "dialogue" precisely 
> because it will be used so often -- for example, in marking up a 
> fictional story, one would not use Q or QUOTE to mark dialogue, because 
> one is not quoting the characters, rather, the dialogue indicates that 
> the author is speaking in that character's voice...

<q> isn't used much either. I really don't think it is realistic to expect 
<dialog> (or <d>) to be used enough to justify having such a short name.

Based on my experience doing studies of Web content, I would estimate that 
if you took a random sample of 1000 pages on the Web, at most one would 
have some text that would be appropriate for <dialog>.

(We're adding <dialog> to prevent abuse of <dl> and to allow <dl> to get 
stricter semantics, not because it has a high-profile use case.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 06:59:36 UTC