Re: proposal for HTML4.01 amendment: <BR PAGEBREAK="before">

On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 05:52:53PM -0500, Frank Tobin wrote:
> Philip Brown, at 14:34 -0800 on 2002-01-11, wrote:
> 
> > You could just as well say that <BR> and <HR> are "presentation". But
> > they arent even deprecated.
> 
> <hr> presumably has semantics (though the name suggests otherwise; the
> semantics were probably an afterthough).  It is a 'divisor' of sorts.
> I don't know about <br>...good question, though.

I think "hr" was invented, because someone decided "I'm not going to accept
pagebreaks in the standard, no matter what", and someone else decided,
"well, we need SOMETHING like a pagebreak", and so snuck in 
Horizontal Rule.
The irony is, HTML as used in the field, would have been much, MUCH better
off if the standard started out as,
"Visual User Agents may implement HR as a horizontal line.
 When printing, however, it is expected to be treated as a page break"


> These arguments are much better than the ones you presented in your
> original message.  Unfortunately, your argument goes like "See!  HTML
> *already* has this stuff!" when 'this stuff' (hr/br) is probably the
> grayest part of the HTML standard with respect to its semantic legitimacy.
> Sorta like my saying, "You get no points for pointing out contradictions
> in American law".

The difference here being that standards bodies get to FIX contradictions
in the standards they govern.  And IMPROVE them, based on the needs of the
users of the standard. Ideally, without having to go to the US supreme
court :-)
"semantically pure" or not, this is a strong need,
that has been begging to be fixed since HTML2.0 6 years ago.

Speaking of fixing, what is the official proceedure for getting the
standard amended? Is it that any official w3c "member" can propose a
change, and then the others vote on it? Or is it limited even more, to
those on an official "HTML working group" ?
Speaking of limited, is there anyone else who actually reads and emails
this mailing list? :->

Received on Saturday, 12 January 2002 02:41:54 UTC