[whatwg] <h1> to <h6> in <body>

Thu Mar 31 04:24:31 PST 2005

First, I don't understand why section 2.4 of the Web Apps spec exists -- 
or sections 2.3, 2.5, 2.6.2, or 2.7. None of these seem to have nothing 
to do with "eas[ing] the authoring of Web-based applications", or even 
anything to do with Web-based applications at all. They would make more 
sense in a separate HTML Semantic Redefinitions spec.

Having said that ...

Ian Hickson wrote:
 >...
 > On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Brad Fults wrote:
 > >
 > > Firstly, I don't think a paragraph preceding a section header should
 > > be associated with that section. For instance, if one puts a
 > > commentary before a book (and thus before Chapter 1), the commentary
 > > isn't meant to be part of Chapter 1.
 >
 > So what would it be associated with?

The document as a whole.

 > (And wouldn't the first header in a book be the book's title,
 > which it _would_ make sense for the paragraph to be associated with?)

The first header, sure, but that wouldn't be an <h1>, that would be a 
<title>. If you're putting an entire book in one HTML file, you're not 
optimizing for Web access, so you can use <title> for the actual title 
rather than for a context-independent title+description+publisher mishmash.

 > I'm concerned that if we imply a section before the first header,
 > a lot of documents are going to end up with implied first sections
 > that will look silly in outliners.

Some outliners have root elements, some don't. Some outliners don't even 
allow sections at all, just bulleted/numbered items. I don't know why 
you're trying to design for one particular kind of outliner.

 > A lot of documents have things before their main header, if only
 > advertising, introductory paragraphs, or the like.
 >...

Which certainly don't belong to the first chapter.

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/