Re: <dialog>

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
>
> restoring wai-xtech to the carbon-copy list

This isn't really a wai-xtech issue (it's a core HTML5 vocabulary naming 
issue), but ok.


> > <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>.
> 
> what was the methodology used?

None, I'm making a prediction from my experience of looking at randomly 
selected Web pages for the past few years.


> D and Q aren't used because (a) one does not yet exist and (b) most 
> places where Q would be appropriate, character entity values or simple 
> "naked" quotes are utilized...

I was just talking about pages that would have any use for <dialog> at 
all, but indeed, even many of the pages that _could_ use <dialog> would 
likely not make use of it, even if we educate people until we're blue in 
the face.


> aren't we trying to improve the web -- doesn't that mean improving the 
> user and authoring experience by using D and Q to signify dialogue and a 
> quote, respectively, so that they CAN be utilized by page authors...  
> use of Q and D as semantic markers is not only critical, but the only 
> semantically sensible thing to do, and lachy's web developer's guide to 
> HTML5 should stress to authors that they utilize such elements, rather 
> than indicatiing dialogue or quotations with character entity values, 
> unicode values or "naked" quotes...

My point is that even if every single relevant page used <dialog>, it 
would still be used extremely rarely and wouldn't justify using a short 
name.

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

Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 07:28:21 UTC