Re: itemheader names <h>

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am absolutely certain that you will see <h> rampantly misused to replace <h*>.
> Is this a problem?

Given the current spec text (where <h> is not a heading), yes.  Given
appropriate changes, no, but there's already been a decision not to
use <h> for headings, so the changes would have to fight against the
existing reasoning against this.

> In other words, are there places that meet all three of the following:
> (a)  They need a header of some sort
> (b)  This header is "small enough" that it should NOT show up in the outline.
> (c)  They can also contain "regular" headers that *should* show up in
> the outline.

I'm not certain what you're referring to here.  The problem I'm
alluding to is that if <h> is in the language, you will absolutely see
this sort of thing showing up:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>My Blog</title>
<h>My Blog!</h>
<p>Welcome to my blog...</p>

If you're intending <h> to be a general heading, and want it to play
the same role that <h1> currently plays in the outline algorithm,
that's fine.  If that's not your intention, then we can't use <h>,
because it *will* get widely misused in this way.

> Offhand, the closest I could come to a problem location is figuring
> out whether the <h> of a figure should show up or not.

<figure>s are sectioning roots, and so their headings don't show up in
the document outline.

> Even there, I
> don't see that as varying within a single page, and I don't see it as
> being all that horrible if people who use the wrong element get one
> too many (or one too few) levels of detail in the Table Of Contents.

We shouldn't make it gratuitously difficult to author a page with a
good outline by offering an element that just begs to be used as a
heading, but isn't a heading.  Even worse, <h> *was* a heading in an
XHTML2; while this doesn't prevent <h> from ever being used, it does
mean that it's probably silly to make it be something similar to a
heading without actually being a heading.

Really, though, the problem I fear is that the outline will end up
containing *no* headings at all, because everything is <h>.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 23 September 2009 00:19:53 UTC