- From: Orion Adrian <orion.adrian@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 19:34:19 -0400
- To: www-style@w3.org
> David, good point about Wiki languages (there are few of them in fact with the
> similar concept ).
> I would extend this further: appearance of Wiki languages highlights the
> problem:
> HTML is not a content definition language but rather a strange mix of
> content *and* layout definitions. At least it is used this way now. This mix I
> guess
> is the source of many conceptual problems in HTML and CSS.
While HTML doesn't have that many layout-heavy structures (colspan,
rowspan, div and span come to mind), you can't really talk about HTML
without talking about CSS. What it does have is a lack of distinction
between sections of a page, relying on merging them all together.
> Wiki (and Blog, btw) languages are just an attempt to clear content from layout
> information.
>
> To define layout it should be a different language or just one additional
> tag/element in HTML+ suitable for
> defining layout and clearly separates layout definition and content definition.
>
> Sort of...
> <htmlplus>
> <frame layout="gridbag" role="showcase" >
> <frame name="east" role="sidebar"> ...simplified html markup here...
> </frame>
> <frame name="west" role="content" scrollable> ...simplified html markup
> here... </frame>
> </frame>
> </htmlplus>
> ('frame' here is not a exactly <frame> in current HTML)
We're still linking content and layout explicitly assuming that one
piece of content gets one layout when one piece of content could
concievably have a ridiculously high number of layouts available to
it.
--
Orion Adrian
Received on Thursday, 15 September 2005 23:34:42 UTC