[whatwg] <CENTER>, <MENU>, <DIR>, <NL>

[Anne van Kesteren]

Quoting "Eugene T.S. Wong" <lists.eugenetswong at gmail.com>:
>>> <DIV> is  no more semantic that <I>, <B>, or <CENTER>, yet they
>>> have their uses.
> <snip>

You snipped the part about <div> not being in the proposal for HTML5 which is
pretty important imho.


>>> I believe that they are useful for visual user agents, in that we  
>>> don't  have to provide a class name for simple uses. Generally  
>>> speaking, <CENTER>  should be used sparingly, if at all, but it 
>>> should  be used. <CENTER> could  be used for resume headings and 
>>> various other  types of text, like peotry.
>>
>> What would its semantics be as opposed to <div>? Do you have a 
>> concrete  proposal
>> as how <center> would work?
>
> I don't think that it is semantic at all.

That in itself is a reason not to include it.


> It's just that sometimes it  would save us some hassles of having to type:
>
> <style>
> #intro{text-align:center}
> </style>
>
> <div id="center">blah blah blah</div>

<center> does _very_ different things from what you just described.


>>> I'd like to recommend that the WHATWG bring back <MENU> & <DIR>,
>>
>> <http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-menu>
>>
>> I have not seen <dir> and I'm unsure what it could be used for...
>
> I think that I saw it in an old spec, or an old book. It's definitely 
> not  a WHATWG thing.

I've seen it before, just mentioned that I hadn't seen <dir> in  the HTML5
proposal.


> <DIR> could be used for listing files. If you want to print out the 
> files  of a directory and its subdirectories, then you could do that 
> with <DIR>.

Well yeah, and what if I want to list vegetables? I think the element is to
specific and not really that useful.


>> I could not find <NL> (or <nl>) in any XHTML recommendation. I also never
>> encountered it anywhere as actually being used, only in some examples  taken
>> from the XHTML 2.0 draft...
>
> Yes, the draft is where I got it from. I hope that I didn't  
> miscommunicate. It's just that I'm not accustomed to using "draft" &  
> "recommendation" for these discussions. I'm accustomed to thinking in 
>  terms of "standard" & "non-standard". I'm working on it, though. :^)
>
> Does that clarify things?

You were talking about consistency with XHTML. Yet there has been no
recommendation or standard (whatever you prefer) that contains such an element
so the argument is bogus. <menu> on the other hand...


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>