Re: ol, ul, nl, dl, oh my! (was Re: [XHTML 2] removal of navigation list element)

* Shane McCarron wrote:
>While it is incompatible, it is not *arbitrarily* incompatible, if you 
>see what I mean.  For example, we could have easily gotten rid of the 
>"a" and "img" elements, but we have not because people like and use 
>them.

Sorry but the HTML Working Group obviously resolved to get rid of it and
reconsidered recently, the latest public draft is the first one that in-
cludes an 'img' element. This 'img' is not compatible with the old 'img'
element and not actually included in the document type definition. Based
on section 4 we see the following elements survived so far:

  a           dd          h5          object      ruby        td
  abbr        dfn         h6          ol          samp        textarea
  address     div         head        p           select      tfoot
  blockquote  dl          html        param       span        th
  body        dt          input       pre         strong      thead
  caption     em          kbd         rb          style       title
  cite        h1          label       rbc         sub         tr
  code        h2          li          rp          sup         ul
  col         h3          link        rt          table       var
  colgroup    h4          meta        rtc         tbody

the following elements got dropped:

  acronym     big         font        img         nextid      s
  applet      br          form        ins         noframes    script
  area        button      frame       isindex     noscript    small
  b           center      frameset    legend      optgroup    strike
  base        del         hr          listing     option      tt
  basefont    dir         i           map         plaintext   u
  bdo         fieldset    iframe      menu        q           xmp

and we have a few new elements:
  
  action      extension   item        output      secret      submission
  alert       filename    itemset     quote       section     submit
  bind        group       l           range       select1     summary
  blockcode   h           listener    rebuild     send        switch
  case        handler     load        recalculate separator   toggle
  choices     help        mediatype   refresh     setfocus    trigger
  copy        hint        message     repeat      setindex    upload
  delete      insert      model       reset       setvalue    value
  dispatch    instance    nl          revalidate  standby

Not that survivors like <input> and <textarea> have much to do with the
old elements with the same local name, and we did not even look at the
attributes or the various design changes yet. I fail to see the pattern,
but if there is one, it is clear that it has nothing to do with common
use of the elements.

Such compatibility is of course very important, we know after all that
"much of XHTML 2 works already in existing browsers". I did not have a
chance to visit this alternate reality yet though.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ 

Received on Thursday, 2 June 2005 09:54:40 UTC