Re: anchor as block level element

From: "Jonathan Chetwynd" <j.chetwynd@btinternet.com>
>
> Probably a crazy dream, but is there a cogent argument for changing 
> anchor to a block level element?
>
> Why was anchor made inline?
>

Reason is technical and probably historical at the moment:

Technically speaking pure HTML does not require existence of DOM
in the way it is defined here: http://www.w3.org/DOM/ .

To render pure HTML there is no need for DOM. You can simply
parse HTML and layout words and images on the screen - direct
interpretation.

Therefore the only minimally required information you have in this case is 
words and
their positions on the canvas. This is why anchors and hyperlinks are inline 
only -
they attached to words - the only known positioned entities.

As you may know  also "block element"  term is different in HTML and CSS.
Block in HTML is an element require ending tag and in CSS it describes the
way of how element of the DOM will be rendered.

To be short: DOM is a child of scripting and CSS.

Andrew Fedoniouk.
http://terrainformatica.com

Received on Thursday, 6 October 2005 16:34:26 UTC