Re: Draft text for summary attribute definition

Philip TAYLOR writes:

> Ian Hickson wrote :
>
> > The spec does in fact currently prohibit [the use of layout tables],
> > explicitly, several times.
>
> Then I think this aspect of the specification should be re-visited.  I
> believe that the specification should set out to address what is, and
> what is not, syntactically valid HTML; I do not think that it should
> attempt to define what is /semantically/ valid HTML,

I'm struggling to see how that'd be possible: how can we define, say,
the <h1> element without saying that its contents will be interpreted as
a heading?

That's saying that the contents of <h1> have the semantics of a heading
-- and therefore that to put something inside <h1> that isn't a heading
will cause an HTML-5-compliant interpretation of the document to ascribe
to it a different meaning from that intended by its author.  In other
words, the document with the meaning the author intended isn't valid
according to HTML 5.

So if <table> is defined as marking up a data table then it simply isn't
valid to use <table> for anything else -- whether that be layout or any
other purpose.

Smylers

Received on Sunday, 1 March 2009 13:38:10 UTC