Re: HTML Form attributes

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 3:22 PM, Francesco Iovine <f.iovine@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> last Saturday at the Amsterdam Doc Sprint, Scott and I had the opportunity
> to talk a bit about how to improve the Wiki in HTML Elements and Attributes.
>
> In short, we have to delve deeper into "applies to" and "property applies
> to" fields, anyway we agreed on the following:
>
>    - each HTML attribute should be linked to one or more HTML elements
>    (not DOM Elements), and the User/Contributor should have the possibility to
>    specify which elements the attribute applies to
>    - each HTML elements should list automatically all the attributes
>    which can applies to it
>    - each HTML Element should inherit from a DOM Element
>
> This is just the first step, anyway it should solve most of the problems I
> encountered in working on the HTML5 Form Attributes pages.
>

Glad to see folks thinking about these issues!

Back in the day I remember that there was a reason to associated attributes
with DOM elements, not HTML elements. I'm struggling to remember why it
was--I think it's because DOM elements have an inheritance structure that
makes it easier to associated attributes to the highest common ancestor,
whereas HTML elements have no such structure and thus it would take a lot
of manual/brittle work to wire up attributes to the right elements.

As an example, the title attribute is allowed on many different HTML
elements; ideally you wouldn't have to enumerate them but figure out the
highest common DOM element ancestor and apply it that way.

Does that make any sense, or am I talking crazy talk?

>
> Cheers,
>
> Francesco <https://twitter.com/franciov>
>
>
> On 25 September 2013 22:57, Francesco Iovine <f.iovine@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Just to let you know the associated issues:
>>
>> http://project.webplatform.org/content/issues/65
>> http://project.webplatform.org/content/issues/67
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Francesco <https://twitter.com/franciov>
>>
>>
>> On 11 September 2013 20:06, Francesco Iovine <f.iovine@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> at the last Doc Sprint in Zurich I started working on HTML Form
>>> attributes and found out that there seems to be a lack of consistency in
>>> WebPlatform's URL structure for HTML attribute pages.
>>>
>>> Here are some examples:
>>>
>>>    1. the "value" attribute has no general page html/attributes/value<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/value> and
>>>    has a page for each element it applies:
>>>    html/attributes/value_(input_elements<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/value_%28input_elements%29>
>>>    ), html/attributes/value_(textarea_element<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/value_%28textarea_element%29>
>>>    ), html/attributes/value_(button_element<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/value_%28button_element%29>
>>>    ), html/attributes/value_(HTMLProgressElement<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/value_%28HTMLProgressElement%29>
>>>    ), html/attributes/value_(param_element<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/value_%28param_element%29>
>>>    ), html/attributes/value_(li_element<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/value_%28li_element%29>).
>>>    Moreover, using the WP search tool there's no results matching the
>>>    query "value" <http://docs.webplatform.org/w/index.php?search=value>.
>>>
>>>    2. the "type" attribute page for the HTML Input element has the
>>>    following (different) structure: html/elements/input/type<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/elements/input/type>.
>>>    It's located in the "elements" subtree and contains a list of the possible
>>>    values of the "type" attribute: each item of the list links to a page with
>>>    a URL structure like following: html/elements/input/type/button<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/elements/input/type/button>
>>>    , html/elements/input/type/checkbox<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/elements/input/type/checkbox>
>>>    , html/elements/input/type/color<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/elements/input/type/color>
>>>    , html/elements/input/type/date<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/elements/input/type/date>
>>>     etc.
>>>
>>>    3. the "type" attribute is defined also for other elements, but in
>>>    the "attributes" subtree: html/attributes/type_(button_element)<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type_(button_element)>
>>>    , html/attributes/type_(param_element)<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type_(param_element)>
>>>    , html/attributes/type_(script_element)<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type_(script_element)>
>>>    , html/attributes/type_(select_element)<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type_(select_element)>
>>>    , html/attributes/type_(textarea_element)<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type_(textarea_element)>
>>>    , html/attributes/type_(ul,li,ol_elements)<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type_(ul,li,ol_elements)>
>>>    , html/attributes/type_type_(a,_link,_embed)<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type_type_(a,_link,_embed)>.
>>>    (For some of these elements the "type" attribute doesn't exist in W3C
>>>    specifications and should be deleted)
>>>
>>> Regarding the "type" attribute, together with Chris concluded that they
>>> should all be covered on the html/attributes/type<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type> page,
>>> so I flagged every subpage of html/elements/input/type<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/elements/input/type> as
>>> Merge Candidates with the [[html/attributes/type]] page, moved all relevant
>>> information to the page html/attributes/type<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type> and
>>> added examples.
>>>
>>> Now, I see 2 problems in the page html/attributes/type<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/attributes/type>
>>> :
>>>
>>> 1) the "Applies to" entry refers to N elements, but Media Wiki doesn't
>>> provide a way to let an attribute refer to more than 1 element (or at least
>>> I don't know how to do that)
>>>
>>> 2) there's no way to specify the compatibility related to a specific
>>> value of an input type (e.g. input type="date"). It was possible for
>>> html/elements/input/type<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/html/elements/input/type>
>>>  pages.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Francesco <https://twitter.com/franciov>
>>>
>>
>>
>