[whatwg] article: do we really need this?

[Elliotte Harold]

Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:

> There is a problem in that <article> might still have no way of
> referencing it, but the fact that is a discrete piece of content
> suggests it should. Could include a conformance requirement for
> <article> to have a fragment identifier (e.g. for comments) and/or a
> permalink (e.g. for blog posts)? e.g.:
> 

I think it's pretty danged important that each such piece have a clearly 
distinguished and unique URI.

However, more often than not this URI is going to point to a different 
page, rather than just the same page+a fragment ID.

In other words, the article is really not even on the page. What's on 
the page is an excerpt and perhaps a link. The <article> element does 
not actually contain the article.

The use cases that are being suggested are real use cases, but they seem 
to be well solved by a section element, probably with some predefined roles.

I don't think the nature of an <article> is likely to be obvious to most 
authors. I don't have a lot of optimism that it will be used in the way 
it's intended, if it's used at all.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
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