[whatwg] [WA1] <ol type=a> is semantic

[Kornel Lesinski]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:11:40 +0100, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> BTW I'd be tempted to suggest that the attribute on <ref> be for="" and
> that it take an IDREF rather than a URI, to avoid any chance that people
> might try to refer to things in other documents and expect it to work,  
> and also for consistency with <label for=""> and <output for=""> -- what  
> do
> you think?

I like the idea, but I see some minor problems:

- user agents may need to stop progressive rendering if there is forward  
reference (<ref />  before referenced list item).

- what if CSS markers/list-style are dynamically chaged (on hover or using  
js)? Should references be changed realtime as well? As far as I know there  
isn't any similar element in CSS, so engines may not be prepared to  
support something like that.

- what should be done with references to non-existant ID? I think that if  
fallback content is displayed in such case, it will lead to hard-to-spot  
errors:

<ol><li id="foo" /></ol>
See <ref to="f00">1</ref>.

In testing it will seem OK to author, but will break when list is changed.

-- 
regards, Kornel Lesinski