Re: HTML is a declarative mark-up language

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?

Exactly

> I've so far tried to avoid redundant links like that.
> 
> Isn't it self-explanatory that the attributes that apply to every element 
> also apply to each element listed in the spec...?

It isn't self-explanatory if you jump into middle of spec by following
link without previously reading and remembering all preceding bits of
specification.

> It depends on the element's ancestors, as described under the definition 
> of "transparent".
>
> The problem with <a> is that actually I know of no formal gramar capable 
> of describing the actual content model of <a>. So I don't know how to 
> provide a non-prose formalism for <a>'s content model.

Yes, I see that <a> element with transparent content model was quite
unfortunate example.

For some elements presented content model is clear, for example for
lists you can easily see that only <li> is allowed as children.

But for many elements their content model is defined as phrasing or flow
content. And when I tried to follow definition of those content models I
have the same problem as with transparent -- I was not able to dig into
list of element that are available.

				Jirka

BTW, in NVDL you are able to express transparent content model by using
trigger and unwrap. But I'm not proposing to use NVDL for HTML5 ;-D


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