- From: Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:03:22 +0100
- To: Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
- CC: HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>
Hi Steve, On 23/01/2013 11:41 , Steve Faulkner wrote: > I think the definition of the article element in HTML [1] is overly > vague and broad, which leads to intended and unintended use that > undermines its usefulness as a semantic construct for users that > actually consume its semantics such as screen reader users. I personally don't have a problem with its vagueness. Assigning overly strict semantics to elements leads to DocBook, and if DocBook is what we want then I would recommend DocBook. Vagueness does open the door to my cherished repurposability. But obviously you need to strike a balance lest all become a <div>. Which is not to say that I want to reject outright your proposal to reassess <article> advice (and I do lament the fact that it is likely too late to rename it <infolump>) but it would be a lot easier to figure out whether it's worth changing something if you made a more concrete proposal as to what you think should change. > For example, the spec promotes the use of article as a container of, > well, an article and also for each instance of a comment on an article > (example: [2]). > Yet there is no defined method of exposing the semantic differences > between an article in the common understanding of the term and when > used as defined in the broader HTML definition. It is true that offering to reuse <article> for comments perhaps reflects a pre-YouTube Habermasian optimism in the public sphere's competency. But I can't say I entirely dislike that. Concerning exposing the semantic differences between the two, why not handle that with RDFa/Microdata? See http://schema.org/Comment and http://schema.org/Article? Or perhaps more appropriately for this specific usage http://schema.org/BlogPosting and http://schema.org/UserComments? -- Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon
Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2013 12:03:27 UTC