Re: HTML is a declarative mark-up language

Anne van Kesteren 2009-01-29 11.28:
> On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:17:18 +0100, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no> 
> wrote:
>> HTML 4 has an overview of all the elements [1], where the description 
>> of each element makes it clear *why* each element has the name it has. 
>> As well as a similar table over all the attributes [2]. Those two 
>> pages are probably the best starting pages for to read HTML 4 ...
>>
>> I guess that HTML 5  could benefitted from similar pages.
>>
>> [1] http://w3.org/TR/html401/index/elements
>> [2] http://w3.org/TR/html401/index/attributes
> 
> FWIW, I'm sure those pages will be added. However, doing that before the 
> specification reaches Last Call (or maybe even Candidate Recommendation) 
> seems premature as changes will still be made relatively often. Then 
> again, maybe someone can figure out an easy way to do it automatically.

What you say implies that those two pages must always be 100% in 
line with the rest of the spec - as a mirror, at each and every 
moment. Which would be nice of course if they were. But in fact, 
it is enough that they are 100% correct and updated only when the 
document is supposed to be ready ... at Last Call or something.

Also, we do not need to consider those two pages only "reference" 
- they can be considered part of the spec. And as such, the could 
function also as a map of where we are headerd.

Anyway, taking the name attribute of the anchor element: clicking 
the link of for that attribute inside the attributes page could  - 
until that section was written - lead to a placeholder  of some sort.

FWIW.

PS: I do think that HTML 5 has a pretty decent ToC.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Thursday, 29 January 2009 10:54:34 UTC