[whatwg] INS and DEL in lists

Keryx Web webmaster at keryx.se
Tue Mar 25 12:44:33 PDT 2008


Some of you might have seen this, but accpording to the original author 
there was no response. His suggestions make sense to me. I've been there 
as well.

Lars Gunther

This is from Thomas Thomassen on WSG's list:

------------
I was working on some examples for the use of <del> and <ins>. 
http://www.thomthom.net/blog/2008/03/document-history-viewer-making-use-of-del-and-ins/

As I was working on this I wanted to mark up a list where items had been 
added and removed. That's when I realised that you can't wrap up <li> 
<dt> or <dd> in <del> or <ins> elements because <ul>, <ol> and <dl> only 
allows list items as their direct child.

The <del> and <ins> then have to be wrapped inside the list item.

<ul>
   <li>Item 1</li>
   <li><del>Item 2</del></li>
   <li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

When I hid the <del> using display: hidden; the list would render 
something like this:

* Item 1
*
* Item 3

Because I could wrap up the entire list item, the bullet point would 
still remain.

To me it appears illogical to not wrap the <del> or <ins> around the 
list items when you add and remove items to the list. I'm guessing it's 
a case where every scenario wasn't accounted for when the specifications 
was written. (Yes, I know that I could add an extra class to the list 
item that I wanted to hide, but it's not the point. It shouldn't be 
necessary.)

However, when this scenario presents itself I see it as fine to break 
the specification and mark it up like this:
<ul>
   <li>Item 1</li>
   <del><li>Item 2</li></del>
   <li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

This seem to render exactly as I expect it to do in every browser I've 
tested.

* Item 1
* Item 3






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