[whatwg] the cite element

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Erik Vorhes <erik at textivism.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, Jim Jewett wrote:
>>> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>>> > On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>>> >> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> I don't know how
> otherwise to respond to such laughably obvious "reductio ad absurdum"
> arguments.

Erik, Just so you are aware in the future, reductio ad absurdum (aka
proof by contradiction)
is a legitimate technique used in mathematics and logic to deductively
prove statements.
I'm not sure your usage of that phrase is correct or common--that is,
to simply call someones argument
absurd.  If you realize that someones argument is absurd it means you
have identified at least
one invalid statement in the argument. If you desired you could even
prove them wrong by
constructing a proper reductio ad absurdem argument.

> 2. If you want to play the "reductio ad absurdum" game, I propose we
> eliminate <article> from the specification, because some stupid
> content author might try to create a document with the following
> markup:
>
> <p><article>The</article> rain in Spain falls mainly on
> <article>the</article> plain.</p>

Again. If you appropriately "play the reductio ad absurdum game," then
that would be a good thing. You
would be proving the other person's argument wrong.

I'm sure I'm wasting other peoples time too iif they've read this far;
but there is probably a more productive
way to discuss HTML5 topics than using insults.
HTML5 topics without

Received on Tuesday, 6 October 2009 13:31:07 UTC