Re[2]: WD-xhtml2-20021211 comments

Hello Christoph,

2002-12-14T02:46:53Z you wrote:

>> Why get rid of hr:
> I've not yet been presented a usecase for it, that couldn't be satisfied with
> CSS or an image.
Bull's eye. As far as I remember the example with nested <section>s
went unresponded. Fighting with presentational use of semantical
elements the W3C continues to include presentational things into the
new markup langs.

>> I admit there are situations where it could possibly be useful,
>> but I don't think such situations constitute a *need* for hr.

> Yeah, there's a bunch of possible elements with a much higher need.
And somehow no one's going to add them.

> My additions (after a quick oversight)
> ---------------------------------------------

> 8.1. The abbr element
> I'm fine with the acronym element being gone as it removes confusion, but abbr
> should learn an attribute to designate at least abbreviations, acronyms and
> initialisms. Foreign languages may as well have other kinds.
> Should the title attribute be used for the spelt out version of the enclosed
> term, e.g. for aural UAs, or does it need an extra attribute? I sometimes want
> to provide also the translation of an abbreviation, but if I put it into the
> title attribute, a speech synthesizing browser might read both, but shan't.
> Example: <abbr title="id est" replace="that is">i. e.</abbr>.
I'd say this is not a good solution. It's the task of aural UAs to
generate the correct pronounciation. I actually faced the problem when
I translated some of the W3C docs. I marked the untranslatable
abbreviations with xml:lang attribute (at least that's what the WAI
list members advised me to do).
So your example should (imho) read:
<abbr title="id est" xml:lang="la">i. e.</abbr>

If a user of an aural UA has set his preferences to read the
foreign words in their native form he should hear "id est". If the user
told the UA that he has no knowledge of foreign languages the UA simple
takes "that is" from the memory and pronounces it.

Another example: whenever a clever aural UA comes across
<abbr title="et cetera" xml:lang="la">etc.</abbr> in the text it
pronounces "and so on" for an English user, "und so weiter" for you,
and "i tak daleye" for me. On the other hand if we had set it not to
change the native pronounciation we all would hear "et cetera".

> 8.4. The code element
> I recently started to designate different code snippets with a class attribute,
> e.g. <code class="css">. I wonder if code may gain value with a language
> attribute. A UA may offer to open the text, when marked, in the appropriate
> editor or use proprietary syntax highlighting code then.
> I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to see a blocklevel version of code
> (and samp), to avoid "<pre><code>". Child elements more sophisticated than the
> current code and var are probably too much for a simple ML like HTML.
As for me I see no use for the <pre> element. Poems could be marked
with <l>s, while pieces of computer code with <code> and appropriate
style rules.

> 9.1. The a element
> In one example the deceased name attribute is used.
I wonder if the WG would dare to remove the <a> element. Three (3)
elements carrying no semantics and having the same purpose is
excessive. I'm talking about <div>, <span> and <a>.

> 10. XHTML List Module
> name ist not only a bad choice, as it intuitively stands for real life names (I
> currently [mis]use cite for those) and not the name of the parent element, but
> it also should be in all list style. Why not use h or caption instead?
Or why not make it an attribute of <nl>?

> 11.1.2. Links and external style sheets
> ?xml-stylesheet should at least be mentioned.
> | In the following example, we tell search engines
> Why "search engines" and not "user agents"?

> 13.1. The object element
> Without some way to specify a caption, object is pretty useless seeing that
> almost any element supports embedding, i.e. the src attribute.
> I welcome meta to be no longer an empty element, but so should be the very
> similar param element.

> 14.2. The sub element & 14.3. The sup element
> Drop in favor of a new index element or the like. There should be no need for a
> Presentation Module.
> "Mlle" in the (double) example lacks a abbr element.
Furthermore, the example with H2O (according to the WAI
recommendation) should be marked with CML or other chemical markup.

Regards,
---
  Alexander "Croll" Savenkov                  http://www.thecroll.com/
  w3@hotbox.ru                                     http://croll.da.ru/

Received on Saturday, 14 December 2002 10:51:53 UTC