[whatwg] several messages about the <di> proposal
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Wed Feb 28 17:01:00 PST 2007
On Sat, 8 Jan 2005, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> >
> > Yes, people have lots of fun trying to find the correct markup for
> > this situation. <http://simplebits.com/notebook/2004/04/20/sq.html>
> >
> > The general problem is that people want to number (or, less commonly,
> > bullet) series of items that are already in multi-element structures,
> > such that <ol>/<ul> cannot be used. Here, if numbering were not
> > required, you would arguably be using <dl> (since each section is a
> > full definition of the instruction given in its first line), but <dt>s
> > can't be numbered automatically solely with HTML. The same applies to
> > a formal dictionary where definitions <dd> for each term should be
> > numbered. And the same applies to a table where each row <tr> should
> > be numbered.
>
> So DL is the biggest problem here, I guess. Since DT can occure multiple
> times and DD as well. Perhaps we should introduce DI, like XHTML 2.0 to
> take away this problem and a lot of other problems with regard to
> styling DL elements?
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>
> Introducing this element affects the content model of DL. There are
> multiple options possible. Either you could permit DI as well. You could
> require it, or have a mixed content model where you only allow the one
> or the other depending on your needs.
>
> Personally I would vote for requiring it. A simple example:
>
> <dl>
> <di>
> <dt>CSS
> <dd>Cascading Style Sheets
> <dd>Content Scrambling System
> </di>
> <di>
> <dt>etc
> <dd>et cetera
> </di>
> </dl>
>
> The advantage of DI is that it allows grouping of definitions and
> therefore takes away the importance of element order. It also has a
> semantic advantage to group these elements. From a structural point of
> view it is very difficult for current DL element constructs to see which
> (DT, DD) are bound together as a single entry.
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>
> Of course you are right about the implied semantics and relationships
> inside the DL element construct, but that does not make it a useful
> construct and I think it makes it less semantic.
>
> You can easily see that by looking at the same document without knowing
> the semantics.
>
> Before:
>
> <bax/>
> <baz/>
>
> After:
>
> <bar>
> <bax/>
> <baz/>
> </bar>
>
> And now you tell me if you would have known that <bax/> and <baz/>
> shared a special relationship looking under "Before:" not further than
> "After:".
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Dean Edwards wrote:
>
> That's a shame (about XHTML2). This seems a pretty unnecessary element.
> A <dl> is a list and we want to describe items in this list. The fact
> that those items are contained in a <dl> tells you what type of list
> items they are. The argument regarding presentation on legacy UAs seems
> pretty feeble. <li> elements can easily be restyled using CSS, leaving
> only non-CSS browsers to worry about. Even then the web-developer has a
> choice whether to use an <li>/<di> element or not. :-S
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
> I think some kind of grouping tag is necessary. You could argue that
> <li> can fulfill that role, but that's not the same as saying that a
> grouping tag isn't needed at all.
>
> [...] it's a matter of grouping complexity. You use <di> in situations
> where you have many terms and/or definitions that all relate to each
> other. There have been some suggestions that you can figure out what
> <dt> elements and <dd> elements relate to each other based on the order,
> but this seems problematic to me. I suspect some browsers would screw it
> up.
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Dean Edwards wrote:
>
> I didn't mean that we don't need a grouping element (although "nice to
> have" is more accurate). I meant that <li> would do fine. <di> is just
> something else for me to remember...
>
> Now that I know that <di> is already defined in XHTML2 it no longer
> seems a big deal. :-)
Given how few people spoke in favour of <di>, both here and in general
(e.g. in response to XHTML2), I have decided to leave it out for now.
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Rob Mientjes wrote:
>
> Well, I'm not sure if it's not already clear that, without a
> definition term, there can be no new definition descriptions.
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005, Christoph Päper wrote:
>
> ACK
>
> So you want to put 'dt' after 'dd'? Seems strange to me.
>
> IMHO each sequence of one or more 'dt' followed by one or more 'dd'
> constitute an entry.
>
> [...] with 'di' probably even more people would abuse 'dl' for 'table'.
Indeed, the <di> element doesn't seem to be semantically needed -- it
doesn't tell us anything about the markup that we didn't already know.
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005, Christoph Päper wrote:
>
> The current content model of 'dl', "(DT|DD)+", does not require that,
> though---maybe it should be changed to "(DT+, DD+)+".
Fixed in HTML5.
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Dean Edwards wrote:
>
> Couldn't we just allow <li> in <dl> instead? Or have I missed something
> from a previous thread?
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>
> There was no previous thread. I guess allowing LI inside DL would be
> possible. However, the content model of LI would change when it is
> directly inside DL. (In XML Schema you can express such a thing, not
> sure if it is possible using DTDs.)
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
> I did a quick test, and using <li> in a <dl> produces a bullet on
> Firefox, IE and Opera, whereas <di> and the complete lack of a parent
> element did not. So, <li> didn't break anything, but it really didn't
> have the desired rendering on legacy browsers. This alone it a good
> argument for defeating <li> in this context. Plus, there's the
> additional fact that <di> is already in the XHTML 2.0 working draft,
> which means that it'll be easier to get <di> through W3C than <dl>/<li>.
On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
> There's also the issue of the fact that all tag associated with
> definition lists start with the letter D (<dl>, <dt> and <dd>). The <li>
> element violates that nomenclature.
Agreed.
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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