[whatwg] Tendious use cases for <dialog>

[Michel Fortin]

Here are some various potential use cases for <dialog> I've collected  
and which I think are problematic with the way the <dialog> element  
is currently defined.

Regular dialogue:

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/03/26/070326sh_shouts_rich

IRC Logs:

http://www.linode.com/irc/logs/linode-xenbeta.log-2006-03-26

Screenplay (not a dialogue in itself, but contains a couple of them):

http://www.lynchnet.com/mdrive/mdscript.html

  - - -

Adding specific elements for all these use cases is probably not  
going to be a good idea since there are too many of them. But I think  
allowing regular paragraphs in the content of <dialog> would be  
useful in a couple of cases. This is an excerpt from the first linked  
page formatted this way:

     <dialog>

       <dt>FRIEND FROM WORK:</dt>
       <dd>I am the loudest! I am the loudest!</dd>

       <p>(Everybody laughs.)</p>

       <dt>MOM:</dt>
       <dd>I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!</dd>

     </dialog>

Formatted excerpt from second link (an IRC log):

     <dialog>

       <p><time>21:57</time></p>
       <dt>caker</dt>
       <dd>sweet</dd>

       <p><time>21:57</time></p>
       <dt>caker</dt>
       <dd>it worked</dd>

       <p><time>21:57</time></p>
       <p class="action">caker closes out last bug</p>

       <p><time>22:04</time></p>
       <dt>encode</dt>
       <dd>yay!</dd>

     <dialog>

These to examples are non-conformant according to the current spec. I  
won't say this is the ideal markup, but I think it's still better  
than opening and closing a dialog element each time you need a <p>  
element. Any better way to markup these?


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