Re: kelvSYC's Thoughts on the new XHTML Draft

Christoph Päper wrote:

> > On 5/8/03 8:05 PM, "kelvSYC" <kelvsyc@shaw.ca> wrote:
> >
> >> blockquote, blockcode, code, and quote Elements:
> >> As I said earlier, it seems like whether something was block or inline
> >> was purely presentational
> 
> I think that elements that can be both, block and inline level, are weakly
> designed. OTOH an element for longer passages of sourcecode was much missed
> and only inadequately faked by "<pre><code>".
> 
> I can see a demand for blocksamp too, which would not only allow sample
> output in it, but more generally usage examples.
> 
> Nevertheless, if I was the [hypothetical] dictator of XHTML2, I'd rename all
> blocklevel element names to start with a capital letter. Thus the 'block'
> prefix wouldn't be needed anymore:
> 
>   8.1. The Address element
>   8.2. The Code element
>   8.3. The Quote element
>   8.4. The Div element
>   8.5. The H element
>   8.6. The P element
>   8.7. The Samp element
>   8.8. The Section element
> 
> ('hr' dropped, because in my book identical to an empty 'Section',
>  'pre' ... 'P' or 'Code' with xml:space="preserve", 'h1'-'h6' gone.
>  Unsure about 'body', 'table', 'ul' etc.)

Unfortunately, we have an undesireable side effect of the fact that the 
people most interested in what to put in XHTML 2 are computer 
programming geeks. (Myself included.) The code, kbd, var and samp 
elements are too narrow in scope for a general purpose hypertext markup 
language. Adding blockcode was step backwards in my opinion because as 
Christoph pointed out, adding blockcode only makes sense if blocksamp 
(and blockkbd) are added as well.  They are useful elements, but they 
belong in a separate CompML (similar to MathML) not as part of XHTML2.

If one takes a look at real world usage of (X)HTML , the four existing 
computing markup elememts are some of the least used, because so few 
HTML pages deal with computing. If I were the XHTML2 dictator, then 
these four elements would be the first to be purged.

Received on Monday, 12 May 2003 13:01:46 UTC