Re: p in address tag?

On Tue, 8 Nov 2005, Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote:

> On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:51:39 +0100, David Dorward <david@us-lot.org> wrote:
>
>> <address>
>>  Page Author's Name <br>
>>  Page Author's Street Address <br>
>>  Page Author's Town <br>
>>  Page Author's Post Code
>> </address>
>
> I'm sorry to say it, but this sucks, structurally at least.

As well as practically. Adequate markup for lines (which are structural 
parts here, but also visually important) would allow a rendering where
a line is continued with indentation if it does not fit into the available 
horizontal space. It would also allow some noticeable (though short) 
pauses in reading the text aloud, as well as referring to the lines
as elements e.g. in client-side scripting.

> Even <address>'s meaning baffles me.

It was never a good idea, and the use of <address> by the specs is so rare 
that we can't expect search engines, browsers, and other software start
making use of them by the specs. Besides, it's very poorly named.
It should have been <author> or something like that.

> And shouldn't the contents of <address> be specified a bit more 
> detailed?

No, the whole element is bad design. We could use <author>, which simply 
specifies that its content is information about the author of the document
(it could be just anything, even a short biography). We could use <email>
and <postal>, though for the former, a link with mailto: URL might 
suffice. A postal address should certainly have an obligatory line 
structure, and probably nothing more. The world of postal addresses is
far too confused, with every little corner of the world making its own
standards for international postal addresses. But knowing just that some 
lines constitute a postal address could be useful. (If it happens inside
<author>, it should probably specify a postal address of the author.)

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/