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

ROBO Design robodesign at gmail.com
Wed Oct 12 14:32:59 PDT 2005


On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 19:38:24 +0300, Lachlan Hunt  
<lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au> wrote:

> Ian Hickson wrote:
<...>
>
> I like that too.  I was thinking something along the same lines when I  
> read the earlier posts in this thread, though (as you mentioned) I would  
> have used the for attribute as an IDREF instead.
>
> I can, however, think of the following issues:
> 1. Can it only refer to a <li id="foo"> element?  Are there any
>     use-cases for allowing it to refer to other elements?
>
> 2. What about <li>s in <ul> or non-<li> elements?  What value would be
>     used, or should it just use the fallback content?
>
> 3. Assuming <ref> gets replaced with the value of the counter from the
>     target element, what happens if the counter has been removed with CSS
>     i.e. what's the default value?  Should it just use the fallback
>     content provided in such cases?
>
> 4. Authors are likely to provide fallback content that is dependant upon
>     the presentation.  i.e. Your example used "f", but assuming no
>     type="a" attribute and no CSS, the list item's counter will probably
>     display "6." instead.
>     It's probably not a serious issue, since users may be smart enough to
>     work out that "f" is the 6th letter, and thus refers to the 6th item.

Hello!

I was reading the thread and ... I was also thinking that the initial  
suggestion of allowing the use of the TYPE attribute would not really  
solve (all) the problems.

The suggestion with which James came up is really good, but the FOR  
attribute should allow more than one IDs. Here's why: a quiz can have a  
question which allows multiple answers. Yet, there are a few things open  
to discussion if this would be done: such as displaying the answers (we  
all know designers probably want various 'cool' ways to delimit each  
answer et cetera).

If it will be decided to allow things such as <ref>s then I'd say: do it  
all the way.

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