[whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Michel Fortin]

Following the discussion about the limitations of <dialog>, I  
meditated about it a little and came up with the idea to generalize  
things a little more.

When we have a dialog intermixed with actions and other events (like  
"ABC leaves the chat room"), basically we have a sequential list of  
events, actions and spoken parts. And in my later example, the  
Canadian Parliament hansard, they're intermixed with timestamps at  
regular intervals and other notes regarding live translations. Again,  
this fits very well the concept of a list of different kinds of  
intermixed sequential events.

So I propose a <sl> element (sequential list) which can be used to  
replace <dialog> as well as other things. The proposal can be found  
here:

<http://www.michelf.com/documents/whatwg/timeline/>

Basically, <dt> and <dd> work just like they do in <dialog>  
currently, except that you can have more than one <dd> following a  
<dt>. <li> is used for listing events other than speech and <time> is  
used to insert time marks where appropriate. And you don't need to  
have any spoken part, meaning you can use it for system logs, or  
historical timelines too by using only <li> and <time>.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/