- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 10:37:26 +0000
Matthew Thomas wrote: >>>> The children of a form element must be block-level elements, >>>> unless one of the ancestors of the form element is a td, th, li, >>>> dd, or block-level element other than div, in which case either >>>> block-level or inline-level content is allowed (but not both). >>> >>> >>> 10. Why the exception of <div>? >> >> >> The idea here is to allow certain cases that were disallowed in HTML4, >> despite being semantically adequate. The <div> element, however, >> doesn't add any semantics, and so doesn't make the case semantically >> adequate. > > > Semantically adequate for what? This will cause people to use > semantic elements inappropriately (most likely, use <p></p> for > something that isn't a paragraph), weakening the overall > meaningfulness of the elements (for example, making a word > processor's paragraph count return incorrect results). As Jim Ley > said earlier > <http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005- > January/002798.html>, HTML elements cover Web-document semantics > rather than application semantics, so the probability of HTML > containing a non-<div> element appropriate for the meaning of any > given form is near zero. +1 We shouldn't introduce artifical restrictions that can't possibly be enforced and will quickly lead to reality going out of sync with the spec. Plus <div> is, as Matthew says, going to be needed in any language sufficiently simple as to be used correctly by most well-meaning authors.
Received on Monday, 10 January 2005 02:37:26 UTC