Re: kelvSYC's Thoughts on the new XHTML Draft

On Saturday, May 10, 2003, at 22:40 Europe/Helsinki, Tantek Çelik wrote:

> On 5/10/03 7:49 AM, "Henri Sivonen" <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>>>> h1 to h6 Elements:

>> as
>> deprecated. What's the point in introducing something that is marked 
>> as
>> "should not be used" right away?
>
> Comfort.  Adoption.  Understanding.  Transition.

The elements and attributes that were deprecated in HTML 4 exist in the 
XHTML 1 namespace because they were labeled "Transitional". Now again 
some old stuff that is labeled deprecated is being carried on to a new 
generation of (X)HTML and there will be more format variations to deal 
with.

> And more importantly, even if it *did* introduce complexity in the 
> software,
> such complexity is *strongly* preferable to complexity in what web
> authors/developers have to deal with.

Don't two different heading schemes constitute complexity for the 
authors?

>> Consider displaying a meaningful
>> outline of a document that mixes h and h1...h6 for example.
>
> There is nothing stopping authors from confusing themselves if they 
> really
> want to.

Given two heading schemes two HTML 2 documents can't be combined using 
naïve copy-paste without ending up in a potentially confusing situation 
which could be avoided if only h and section were allowed.

> Perhaps you mean they are cruft because "Their definition is completely
> historical, deriving from the AAP tag set."[1]?

I mean cruft in the sense that they are redundant considering that 
there will be another preferred way (h and section).

> Elementary psych.  All new is not as attractive as somewhat familiar 
> and
> somewhat new (wish I could find the reference - I went to college 
> before
> textbooks were hyperlinked).  Unless that something new is very very 
> simple
> and fits (nearly) seamlessly into what you already know.

There are a number of other familiar elements in XHTML 2.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://www.iki.fi/hsivonen/

Received on Saturday, 10 May 2003 16:42:36 UTC