Re: suggestion for abolition of <hgroup>

James Clark, Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:18:48 +0700:

> I wonder whether the following formulation of hgroup has been 
> considered: hgroup contains flow content with exactly one child (or 
> possibly descendant?) which is an h[1-6].

I suggested <p> to be allowed as child, myself. I spotted one response, 
from Doug: 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Dec/0192.html

I'm not sure, though, that he is right that allowing a <p> could make 
the <hgroup> be interpreted as header rather than a heading. 

> With this formulation, your example might become:
> 
>   <hgroup>
>    <h1>HTML</h1>
>    <div>A markup language for the Web</div>
>   </hgroup>

Issue: The name '<hgroup>' alludes to 'group of <h[1-6]> elements' - 
like '<colgroup>' refers to 'group of <col> elements'. So, if one 
allows any other flow content than h[1-6] as children, then the name 
would have to change.

> I prefer this because the part that is marked as an <h1> is the part 
> that behaves like an <h1> for all purposes (including the outline). 
> The heading-ness of the subheading is indicated by the inclusion of 
> the subheading in the <hgroup>; there is no logical need to repeat 
> this by also marking it as an <h2>.  This allows hN to be used 
> exclusively to indicate the main heading of a Nth-level section.

Issue: In your example, what about h[1-6] elements inside the <div>? 
Perhaps a designated <subtitle> element would be better then? And if 
so, why not drop <hgroup> entirely and allow a subtitle element inside 
h[1-6] elements?

The good thing about only allowing h[1-6] elements is that we only 
allow the elements that can contain 'heading material'. The reason why 
I suggested <p> as sub element container is also the content model: its 
content model is very similar to that of h[1-6].
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:56:12 UTC