Re: [XHTML2] Unicode line and paragraph separators

On 7 Apr 2003 at 15:55, Masayasu wrote:

> "Ernest Cline" <ernestcline@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >
> > If there 
> > were no earlier (X)HTML standards, I think that separator model would 
> > be clearly the superior.
> 
> Back to 10+ years ago, <p> was an empty paragraph separator in HTML.
> It was changed to a container element in HTML 2.0.  Your argument
> sounds like a step backwards.

That ignores the fact that in HTML 2.0 there is no <div>. Without a 
generic block element such as div, a paragraph separator is clearly 
insufficient and hence the change for separator to container was an 
improvement in that context. By the time that <div> was added, support 
for <p> as a container was so widespread that reversing direction and 
making <p> be only a separator again was not possible nor desirable. 
Marking paragraph boundaries with separator should be done only with a 
formatting character and only if a generic block element exists. If no 
formatting character exists or if a generic block element does not 
exist, then markup is the only reasonable alternative.

Received on Monday, 7 April 2003 11:12:02 UTC