[whatwg] Re: several messages

[Matthew Raymond]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> 
>>>I prefer <datalist> to <cl> because I generally don't like short names,
>>>especially for things that won't be used as much as <p>.
>>
>>Understood, thought I think I'd prefer the name <optlist> if we're going
>>to have longer names.
> 
> Bad choice of words. I didn't mean short names, I meant abbreviated names.
> I have nothing against short names, the shorter the better. I just don't
> like tag names that are abbreviated english.
> 
> Also, "optlist" seems like it would get confused with "optgroup".

    Very well. <datalist>. <choicelist> is a bit too long.

[Snipped part regarding evil UAs not reporting what features they 
support correctly.]

    Okay, but that leaves us back at square one with regards to:

    a) Hiding legacy content from WF2 UAs.
    b) Hiding WF2 content from legacy UAs.

    For (a), all we have the the repetition template, with will probably 
lead to wide-spread abuse. For (b), the only solution I can come up with 
(especially in light of the fact that XHTML can ignore comments) is some 
form of client-side include that pulls in content from a file. Beyond 
that, you're looking at ECMAScript or CSS in both situations.

>>Your model supports calling the list from a <select> within a template?
> 
> Sure, why not? It just does a getElementById() on the value of the "list"
> attribute, then does a getElementsByTagName() to get all the <option>
> children of that element. It doesn't matter where the element is.

    Hmm. So, really, if we cold come up with a solution for (a) above 
that wouldn't involve inappropriate use of the repetition model, then 
what I had would be fine:

    <input type="text" name="combo1" list="list1" />
    <norender>
      <label> or select from the list:
        <select id="list1"><!-- Stuff. --></select>
      </label>
    </norender>

    Actually, in this case, we don't even need <datalist>, and the 
WF2-only code would look like this:

    <input type="text" name="combo1" list="list1" />
    <norender>
      <select id="list1"><!-- Stuff. --></select>
    </norender>

    Then again, with an element like <norender>, you could even do this:

    <norender>
      <input type="text" name="combo1" />
      <label for="list1"> or select from the list:</label>
    </norender>
    <select editable id="list1" name="combo1"><!-- Stuff. --></select>

    So, in a WF2-compliant UA, you just use <select editable>. We keep 
trying to kill it, but it just won't die!!! ;)

>>Okay, you just described the menu features in XUL
> 
> No, I described the menu features of any modern GUI platform. Mac OS X,
> Longhorn, GTK2, Windows XP, etc, they all have these features.

    See! It's THAT good! ;)

>>and yet you have repeatedly stated that you don't know if the XUL markup
>>is the best way to represent this.
> 
> By which I mean exactly that -- I don't know. I haven't yet looked at the
> context menu requirements with an eye to write up the spec. I have no idea
> if the XUL markup is appropriate or not. Maybe it is perfect. Maybe it is
> almost perfect but needs a few tweaks. Maybe it uses terrible attribute
> names and terrible content models and the whole thing should be scrapped
> and a new model written instead.

    Perhaps I should start a thread on what parts of the XUL menu model 
would be appropriate for inclusion in Web Apps 1.0...Get the ball 
rolling while you finish up WF2.

>>I was generally hoping we could get a model for prepopulating a number
>>of different structures. This might be useful when used in conjunction
>>with the repetition model...
> 
> Could you explain how? I'm not sure I understand the use case here.

    Good point. It's a powerful feature in search of a reason to use it.