Re: HTML is a declarative mark-up language

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jan 2009, Jirka Kosek wrote:
>> Ian Hickson wrote:
>>
>> Such index would be very useful, indeed. But I was thinking about adding 
>> links to global attributes to every element definition so it is clear 
>> from the first sight that those attributes are available there.
> 
> There's something on the order of 40 or more attributes that apply to 
> every element; listing them explicitly for each element seems like a lot 
> of redundant text. (There's even more if you start counting common APIs.)

I'm not asking for listing 40 attributes but for adding just one link
that will point to section defining these 40 global attributes. So every
reader will easily find that element XYZ has those 5 element specific
attributes and also shares other global attributes.

>> It would be also useful to have more explicit content model presented 
>> there. Yeah, this sounds like HTML5 markup-spec.
> 
> More explicit than what? I don't understand what you mean here. Do you 
> mean having non-normative formalisms as well as the exhaustive normative 
> text we have now?

Yep, some formalism would it be something like DTD/RELAX NG content
models or something different will be really useful. Let's take <a>
element as an example. Spec in 4.6.1 says:

Content model:
Transparent, but there must be no interactive content descendant.

Now tell me how can I find which elements I can use inside <a>? I was
trying to follow link around "Transparent" and read target text and then
follow other links, ... Maybe it is because late time here, but I was
unable to find this answer.

Having something like hyperlinked grammar is much straightforward there.
For example something like

	http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/link.html

Personally I think that it is much more natural to have such formal
grammar normative and use prose text only as a supplement. But
normativeness/non-normativeness of such formal content-models was not my
point for now. I was questioning practical usability of the current
shape of spec.

				Jirka


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