- From: Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@x-port.net>
- Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 09:57:44 +0100
- To: "'Anne van Kesteren'" <fora@annevankesteren.nl>
- Cc: <webmaster@eammm.com>, <www-html@w3.org>, "'Dan Brickley'" <danbri@w3.org>
Anne/Dan, > Dropping it would work too. I still haven't seen any use > cases that require this particular empty construct. That doesn't mean there aren't any! Steven gives a number in one of his presentations: <http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/04-19-steven-XHTML2-XForms/> (See about 1/3 of the way down.) The idea is that we need some kind of *semantic* separator. In a navigation list it might separate one group of links from another; in some prose it might be a 'pause' that is more than a new paragraph, but less than a new section or chapter. But obviously it is not a 'horizontal rule'. For a start, a separator in many languages is vertical not horizontal, so the solution shouldn't be named for its presentational features. And also if all the author wants is a horizontal or vertical rule, then they can use CSS borders. In the same spirit, a voice renderer could legitimately bypass an <hr> since there is no way of knowing whether the author simply wanted some presentation, or intended something more; the voice browser *shouldn't* bypass <separator> though, since it is possible to know unambiguously that some sort of pause is required. So, if we agree we need something, what should we call it? I don't want to sound unsympathetic to authors, but I can't go along with arguments about how easy or difficult a tag is to spell. For a start I think It's no different to having to remember "iso-8859-1", or whether "beginElement" is "BeginElement". At some point people will just learn "separator". Regards, Mark Mark Birbeck CEO x-port.net Ltd. e: Mark.Birbeck@x-port.net t: +44 (0) 20 7689 9232 w: http://www.formsPlayer.com/ b: http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/ Download our XForms processor from http://www.formsPlayer.com/
Received on Monday, 23 May 2005 08:58:10 UTC