[whatwg] Element name expressiveness
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Mon Dec 10 21:31:26 PST 2007
On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Michel Fortin wrote:
>
> That's a personal opinion, but I think it may have some value.
>
> I find the proposed <x> and <t> elements to lack expressiveness in their
> names. I understand that making them shorter is desirable, but it also
> has a drawback: they're harder to understand simply by looking at the
> source and their meaning can more easily be misunderstood. Not everybody
> read the spec and those that don't are more prone to use them
> inappropriately.
>
> Personally, I'd favor <term> and <time> instead, or anything else that
> conveys a meaning. That's especially important since these element will
> have, most of the time, no noticeable effect on the visual
> representation of the document.
<x>/<term> is gone, and <t> is now <time>.
<m> is the only (I think) element we're adding that's one character long.
That element is contentious and will be examined further at some point.
On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
>
> Given that <xref> as used in other vocabularies is a general
> cross-reference element that's optionally empty (if empty the text of
> the cross-reference is generated from the title of element it
> references), and given that the Web Apps 1.0 <x> isn't a general
> cross-reference element but instead non-empty "a cross-reference to an
> instance of the use of a term, such as a taxonomic designation,
> technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, or similar",
> <term> seems more appropriate than <xref>
The closest element to this is now <i>.
On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
>
> If the design criteria were to try to keep names of new elements
> reasonably short while still having unobscure meanings, then <time> and
> <term> would seem to meet that criteria, and <m> would better be <mark>.
> But I'm not sure what the criteria are. I mean, what's the rationale
> behind having <meter> and <progress> while reducing the name of the
> date/time element to <t>?
It's mostly about how often the elements are expected to be used.
HTH,
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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