Re: Key/Item data

On Wednesday 12 March 2003 9:18 pm, John Lewis wrote:

[renaming <dl>]

> Would
> it make a lick of difference? Yes. Authors of HTML/XHTML1 would have
> to learn new element names instead of using the old ones,

They have to do this already, xhtml 2.0 is not meant to be 
backwards-compatible.  What's the point in breaking compatibility if you 
aren't going to take advantage of it?


> implementors
> would presumably need to duplicate their default dl/dt/dd styling for
> three identical but differently named elements,

A couple of lines in a stylesheet would do this, unless I'm missing something.


> and authors (new and
> old) would have the dubious benefit of a more appropriate element
> name.

There's nothing dubious about it.  The benefits of good names are widely 
accepted to apply to functions and variables, why not elements and 
attributes?


> I think a clearly more beneficial course of action is to clarify that
> dl/dt/dd are generic elements. The example in HTML4 implies that they
> are, and a rewritten definition would make that implication explicit.

I would be happier with this than leaving it ambiguous, but I do feel that 
naming and describing something as a definition list should count for 
something, it's very unintuitive to twist the meaning like that.

-- 
Jim Dabell

Received on Monday, 17 March 2003 12:54:08 UTC