Re: code and blockcode

Simon Siemens schreef:
> Up to now blockcode is rather the same as pre. I don't see any advantage.
> 
> However, adding an attribute codelang, which has values like perl, 
> xhtml, matlab, java, ..., would give it the intended meaning. This would 
> enable
> 
>    Browsers to provide syntax highlighting
>    in addition to the preformated layout

And automatic formatting, too.


> What would be needed is an (open) list of languages. As we could never 
> list all possible languages, a naming guide should be supplied, so that 
> it is very likely, that two people thinking of the same language use the 
> same value. For the most popular languages a fixed list is provided. 
> Maybe something like versioning should be incorporated as well (say 
> "java-1.5" or "sql-2000", where the text in front of "-" is the code 
> language and the text after "-" is the version).

At work we use a similar tag, <bdoc:snippet type="xml"> which can also 
be of type css and js. However, it would be better if this were a MIME 
type, application/xml, application/ecmascript, text/css, etc. But I 
don’t know whether that is appropriate for all languages...

[As an aside: for us this would not be directly useful, we would still 
need to use our own "bdoc:snippet" element, because for type="xml", the 
XML is not escaped (in an XMP-kind of way, but then with content 
highlighting, using a modified version of ‘XML Verbatim’).]

Otherwise the options are to just use ‘class’ or create a similarly 
extensible attribute. Role also comes to mind, but I don’t think that 
one is appropriate here. A few predefined suggestions for browsers to 
hook on would be useful.

Otherwise maintaining a list of languages including all version numbers 
and establishing a naming guide for future languages would be too 
bothersome, if you ask me, unless there is an ISO standard or something 
that has such a thing.


> A second concern (less important) are the (propably often discussed) 
> tags kbd, var, samp. We don't have anything like this in the Struktural 
> Module (but we have code and blockcode). For me kdb, var and samp are 
> some special kind of code. Obviously this is the case for say LaTeX, the 
> perl-interpreter, MATLAB, ... Since code is a specially defined way to 
> provide information almost every input and output is some kind of code. 
> And I don't see any advantage for user agents of any kind that goes 
> beyond the knowledge, that this text is some kind of code. So what about 
> a substition by the code tag extended with a/the role-attribute?

Hmm, I’m not entirely sure about that. That way, <ul> and <ol> and <dl> 
could also be replaced by <list role="...">, etc.

Although I agree that by itself it would not be a bad idea, I don’t 
think it fits within the whole ‘known architecture’ idea. Besides, we 
kind of arrived at the ‘what should be an element in XHTML, and what as 
a role’ question again. So that is why I have doubts.

But on the other hand, when looking directly at XHTML 1.0 
‘compatibility’, <code> with @role will degrade reasonably well, and can 
be styled specifically on UAs which support attribute selectors... 
Besides, those elements aren’t very much used anyway, and code could 
then be extended to express even more, which might be desirable.

Anyways, good ideas!


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!

Received on Monday, 11 July 2005 14:32:55 UTC