Re: <dialog>

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
> 
> i think i have a "solution" to the dialogue versus dialog impasse -- a 
> single letter element name for dialogue (along with a child element to 
> signify what is not dialogue (such as stage directions) -- should i log 
> this proposal as a bug?

The problem with <d> is that it's too short. Single-letter (or even two 
letter) element names only really make sense if the author is going to be 
using them often enough that it makes sense to trade clarity for 
terseness. In this case, this is not an element we expect to see used a 
lot, so using a short name is undesireable.


On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, William Loughborough wrote:
>
> How about if I convince you to rename HTML5's <dialog> something more 
> obscure like <harold>? It's just a string of symbols.

As I mentioned in my earlier e-mail, numerous alternative names have been 
considered; unfortunately, none have been found to be particularly 
suitable in comparison to <dialog>.


I should note that it isn't the end of the world if both vocabularies use 
'dialog' for different things. I only asked whether ARIA might consider 
changing 'dialog' to something like 'dialogbox' because such a change 
seems relatively simple to make, and would remove a point of confusion 
that has been reported by people who are familiar with ARIA and HTML5.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 06:32:08 UTC