Re: p in address tag?

Orion Adrian wrote:

>This all goes back to the HTML's original intentions of marking up the
>basic building blocks of a document through the standard communication
>methods of the day.
>
>However it seems very much that we're confused at this point since we
>seem to be advocating getting rid of some of these basic building
>blocks (like address) and not getting rid of the other building blocks
>(like p). P is in the same exact category of semantics that Hn,
>ADDRESS and UL are. P really means argument, idea, group of thoughts,
>etc. It has different meanings. Here someone was advocating its usage
>for addresses.
>
>But ADDRESS itself means more than author. It could be a destination
>on an envelope or the source address on a letter. Look at documents
>from 10 years ago and you'll see a very close correlation between the
>structures used in them and the elements of early HTML.
>
>--
>
>Orion Adrian
>  
>
I'm not suggesting getting rid of <address>.  My point is that the term 
"address" in ambiguous by nature; I have used <address> to mark up 
copyright statements, because technically copyright is an address for 
the copyright holder.  I've seen it used to do mailing addresses, email 
addresses, addresses for individuals, etc.

It's exact meaning is ambiguous.  And this is complicated by the 
insistence of W3C that it only contain inline elements.  Every example 
of <address> I've ever seen has used <br /> inside it; but <br /> is 
mainly presentational.  It's impossible to style decently, so authors 
(like me) are forced to use <span> and convert <span> into a block level 
element.  This seems, to me, to be both structurally and semantically 
wrong.  Basically, I'm asking if W3C can either change <address> to act 
like a full block container (like <div> and <p> do), or to clarify 
exactly what <address> is meant to do in XHTML somewhere in the specs.  
What's there at this point is very vague.

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Received on Tuesday, 8 November 2005 23:26:36 UTC