Re: Magic Elements (was: kelvSYC's Thoughts on the new XHTML Draft)

On 5/10/03 4:33 PM, "Jelks Cabaniss" <jelks@jelks.nu> wrote:

> 
> Tantek wrote:
> 
>> In some cases, it turned out HTML4 "Strict" made a few removal errors
>> ('target','start','value' attributes), and the only W3C valid way of
>> using these removed features is to use the HTML4/XHTML1 Transitional
>> DTDs. 
> 
> There's a new removal error about to happen: <q>.  Just as there may be
> difficulties in edge cases of <ol start="0">, there may be some with <q> in
> some i18n contexts, but is throwing the baby out with the bathwater
> warranted here?

Are you arguing for deprecating <q> rather than removing it?

I am neutral on this with perhaps a slight bias towards deprecation.  Note
that there is less damage to be done with removal of <q> (as opposed to
h1...h6) since <q> was introduced "recently" in HTML4 (whereas h1...h6 which
have been around "from the beginning").

> If the WG follows the same path for <ol> as it took recently with <q>, we'll
> no doubt end up with something like ...
> 
> <orderedlist>
> <li>1. Cats</li>
> <li>2. Dogs</li>
> <li>3. Rats</li>
> </orderedlist>

Not necessarily, since the "default marker" comes from the <li> rather than
the <ol> (or <ul>).

More likely is having <li> split into two pieces, one for the marker, and
one for the item itself, e.g. (off the top of my head):

<ol>
 <item><m>1.</m> Cats</item>
 <item><m>2.</m> Dogs</item>
 <item><m>3.</m> Rats</item>
</ol>

And I can certainly see advantages to this approach. For one it would leave
the "marker is content vs. marker is stylistic adornment" question up to the
author, which is where that decision belongs.

This also enables the use of markers outside lists, if such a thing makes
any semantic (not just presentational) sense.

> No objections to adding <quote>, but I think the removal of <q> is a major
> mistake.  

Ok, that much is clear, but are you proposing to:
  a. keep <q> as it is in HTML4 (I think this is a bad idea, since <q> has
been shown to be problematic to completely _properly_ implement).
  b. keep <q> but deprecate it

Thanks,

Tantek

Received on Saturday, 10 May 2003 20:25:50 UTC