- From: Tantek Celik <tantek@cs.stanford.edu>
- Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:40:22 -0700
- To: Daniel Hiester <alatus@earthlink.net>
- CC: "www-html" <www-html@w3.org>
Daniel Hiester, at 22:19 on Thu, 19 Jul 2001, wrote:
> Why is it that we don't simply have an element that means 'list.'
> Why was it so important to have the markup parser distinguish the
> difference between an ordered and unordered list?
Semantically they are different as others have pointed out, but I wonder,
instead of <ol>, <ul>, <dl> tags, why wasn't there simply one <list> tag
with a type attribute, e.g.
<ol> = <list type='ordered'>
<ul> = <list type='unordered'>
<dl> = <list type='definition'>
<dir> = <list type='directory'>
<menu> = <list type='menu'>
This would make it easier to add new list types, and even permit combining
them in ways that you currently can't to capture more semantics, e.g.
<list type='ordered definition'>
Perhaps <ol>, <ul>, <dl> were preferred due to brevity? ("unix shell
command" philosophy? but then <blockquote> could have been <bq> etc.)
Maybe someone with more "history" could refer us to the relevant archived
discussion.
Tantek
Received on Friday, 20 July 2001 13:40:17 UTC