[whatwg] Suggestion: Implementation of Tabbed Forms

[Lachlan Hunt]

Matthew Raymond wrote:
>    That would be fine, except that the name "category" may be to 
> specific. For instance, the sections could be grouped by stages or 
> chronology.

   Fair enough.  Perhaps a name that better represents what Ian Hickson 
calls them: mutually exclusive sections, which, BTW, is quite a good 
descriptive name.

>  The sections may even be indistinguishable from each other 
> except for the fact that they are in different sections...

   This has confused me, I'm don't understand what you mean.

>  Perhaps <group> and <groupset> would be better...

   Maybe, but the term "group" doesn't really seem to be any more 
semantic than <div>.  The name should be semantic enough to accurately 
describe it's purpose, so as to avoid abuse (as much as possible) by the 
millions of HTML terrorist currently employed as web 
developers/destroyers, yet generic enough so as not to specify too much 
about it's presentation.

> ...still a problem. <category> and <categoryset> elements
> would degrade to nothing in IE 6.0... styling would not show up.

   So what?  That will happen with any new element introduced. 
Internet-explorer-operability is only needed to the extent that IE users 
can still access the content and use the application.  Also, it seems 
likely that scripting may be used to simulate behaviors and styling in 
IE and other non-WF2 user agents...  For example, I'm working on a 
script right now that can generate a date picker control, for use with 
<input type="datetime"/>, as well as parsing and generating ISO 8601 
compliant dates (since ECMAScript doesn't natively support them) — I 
might have that done in a few weeks, if I can find some spare time to 
fit everything in.

>    Perhaps we should introduce a semantically based |type| attribute to 
> <div> to specify relationships between contained elements:
> 
> <div type="groupset" id="firefox-options">
>   <div type="group">
>     ...

   No, as I [1], and Anne van Kesteren [2] wrote previously, the type 
attribute should not be used for anything except specifying the content 
type of an external resource and the control type for input elements.

> Perhaps it would be helpful if you started a separate thread stating
> your objections to specific items in WF2 you consider corruptions of
> the semantics in HTML. If there are more semantically correct
> solutions to be found that accomplish the same tasks as existing
> portions of the spec, please bring them to our attention.

   Will do, If and when I can find time between completing my personal 
website, rebuilding the website for my work, completing that date 
control/ISO 8601 parser script, keeping up with all the emails from this 
list, W3C lists, newsgroups, blogs, while still fitting in every other 
daily task I need to do; I'll eventually get on to reading the WF2 spec 
in full and working out exactly what's good and bad about it, So, don't 
expect much from me any time soon, but I will try.

>    Then extending semantic grouping and adding properties to CSS to 
> style the new semantic elements, as above, should cause no problem.

   That would be perfect!

[1] 
http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2004-June/000721.html
[2] 
http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2004-June/000727.html
-- 
Lachlan Hunt

http://www.lachy.id.au/
lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au