[whatwg] Re: several messages

[Matthew Raymond]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>>>I don't see why. There's very little practical difference between <div
>>>repeat="template" repeat-start="0"> and <datalist>.
>>
>>There's nothing about the name <datalist> that would tell me it
>>would behave in the manner you describe
 >
> The manner being "list all the data"? Or the manner being "hide the
> contents"? There's nothing about <select> that says it will hide the
> contents either, nor is there anyting about <table> that says that
> unexpected children will be placed at the top of the table.
> 
> My point being that the hiding behaviour is almost "error handling"
> behaviour rather than any important part of the element's semantics.
 >
> And of course you _can_ just use a repetition template if you want, so
> long as it contains the <select> element that your list="" attribute
> points to. :-)

    If including markup in <datalist> is a matter of "error handling", 
then isn't it just as inappropriate to include legacy markup in it as it 
is to include legacy markup in a repetition template? In both cases, 
you're abusing markup to take advantage of the way a UA renders the content.

>>>Why? Duplication seems error prone at best.
>>
>>It's a copy-paste, so it's less error prone than forgetting to put in a
>></datalist> tag. Worst case scenario is that the webmaster does a lot of
>>indenting...
> 
> No, worse case scenario is that the author, when maintaining his site,
> only updates one of them, and doesn't notice because he didn't test it in
> legacy UAs.

    I fail to see how that is worse than having half your form missing 
because you forgot the </datalist> tag.