

Re: what is dt?

From: Lars Gunther <gunther@keryx.se>
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:58:41 +0200
Message-ID: <4AB68971.9010503@keryx.se>
To: public-html@w3.org
2009-09-20 10:55, Smylers skrev:
> For people completely new to HTML having lots of almost-synonymous
> elements but which each can only be used in specific circumstances (and
> it being arbitrary which name happens to be used in which place) may
> well be more confusing than a single element with the same meaning
> everywhere.

Hi again

If anyone is still paying attention to our bikeshedding in this thread...

Yes, I would love to reduce the number of synonym elements as well, but:

It seems to me that what you are describing ("a single element with the 
same meaning") is exactly the opposite of what it would be to use dt-dl 
in figure. Since the meaning WILL NOT be the same as it is in <dl>. And 
as I've stated elsewhere, in <dl> the order is all important, here it 
would not matter.

Re-using dl-dt means not only giving the elements new meaning, despite 
having the same names (confusion #1) but also different syntactic rules 
(confusion #2).

Restricting <rubric> to <figure> (and perhaps details) is in itself no 
harder than restricting <caption> to tables. If that is too confusing we 
can use <figcap> or something like that.

Yes, re-using <legend> or <caption> would have been WAY much better. But 
since that is not an option the current discussion seem to be about 
dl-dt or some new element(s).

But as has been proven dt-dd is not backwards compatible either. I can 
not think that anyone is seriously considering an alternative that would 
only work using hacks with conditional comments!

Lars Gunther
Received on Sunday, 20 September 2009 19:59:39 GMT
