DL and Label (was Re: [XHTML 2] removal of navigation list element)

>Semantics of <dl>

>A definition list defines the relationship between text that the user
>can identify (dictionary terms, faq questions, a key) and the text the
>user desires (dictionary definitions, faq answers, a value).

>This describes how humans and most computers parse. They find what
>they know (in databases it's usually the primary key) and then the
>dictionary allows them to grab at what they're actually searching for.

>Orion adrian

I wholeheartedly agree with this description as it means that dl can
be applied to many things, like a FAQ or citation list, which are not
strictly definitions. The spec refers to a term and a description so I
feel that you can interpreter term and description fairly broadly. If
it is the consensus of this group that a wider use of the tags is
desirable perhaps this could be made more explicit in the spec. If
conversely the group feels that this tag should be reserved for just
glossary style definitions then they should make that clear.

What I think is missing from the spec is a way to define a label for
the term and the definition. The label tag just labels the list. It
would be nice to be able to do this without adding any new tags so
perhaps it would be possible to re use the <h> tag for this.

<dl>
 <label>A definition list</label>
 <h>
    <dt>term</dt>
    <dd>description</dd>
  </h>
  <dd>.....
</dl>

This is surely better than putting the h tag inside the dt and dd
tags. It works in a similar way to thead


 Jeremy

Received on Tuesday, 5 July 2005 15:22:20 UTC