<blocksamp> and <blockkbd> (was Re: kelvSYC's Thoughts on the new XHTML Draft)

On 5/12/03 10:01 AM, "Ernest Cline" <ernestcline@mindspring.com> wrote:

> 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.)

I agree we *do* need to be careful about this, as the bias is obviously
there.

> 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.

I believe <blocksamp> was agreed to (but just not the name until recently),
and so will likely show up in the next draft.  It is fairly easy to see how
sample output could be a "block" (not just in the display sense) of content,
including other block-level (again, not in the display sense) markup inside,
such as lists.

I'm not sure <blockkbd> makes any sense though, since <kbd> is defined as
 "Indicates text to be entered by the user."
and it makes much less sense to expect there to be text to be entered by the
user with block-level markup.

> They are useful elements, but they
> belong in a separate CompML (similar to MathML) not as part of XHTML2.

You're half right.  They belong in a separate module yes, which I believe is
the plan.  They still belong in XHTML2 however, by including that module.
Having a separate module rather than a whole separate language makes much
more sense for something that small/lightweight that integrates well with
the content model.

Thanks,

Tantek

Received on Monday, 12 May 2003 17:22:06 UTC