Re: HTML is a declarative mark-up language

On Jan 29, 2009, at 3:37 PM, L. David Baron wrote:

>
> On Thursday 2009-01-29 23:30 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
>> So you are asking for a link saying "Common attributes" linking to:
>>
>>   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#global- 
>> attributes
>>
>> ...to be added to every element's definition?
>>
>> I've so far tried to avoid redundant links like that.
>
> I think that's actually quite useful, since it makes it a good bit
> easier to use the spec as a reference, and to understand parts of
> the spec by exploring from a piece in the middle.

I agree that it would be convenient for reference purposes, even  
though strictly speaking redundant. One difficulty I have had with  
other specs, both as implementor and content author, is that it is  
sometimes hard to figure out what attributes (or APIs or content  
model) apply to a given element, so I know how to use it properly. For  
example, with the SVG 1.1 spec I have to read chunks of schema  
scattered over many parts of the document to know what attributes apply.

To be fair though, this has been less of a problem with the HTML5  
draft since I know there are exactly two places to look -- the  
definition of the element and the list of global attributes.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 30 January 2009 00:05:25 UTC