[whatwg] Section nesting menu and an old HTML 3 friend LH

[Simon Pieters]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:10:02 +0200, Tim Connor <timocratic at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Okay, sorry if there is a bunch of discussion I'm missing on this, but
> I've never been able to find it, and the archive search showed no
> discussion relating to this.  I feel the LH died an untimely death.  I
> think it's amusing to see the back tracking from that concept inherent
> in some of the more generalized section/header nesting in the w3c's
> later specs.  I also understand that the more explicit approach shared
> in these specs will resolve a lot of this and the addition of nav
> and/or menu, but....
>
> <lh> being returned would be really nice, imho.

I have bookmarked this link bookmarked, where list headers are being  
discussed:

    http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=448982

...with a comment tied to the bookmark: "do we need  
headers/labels/captions/legends for lists?"

What it provides over using a <h1> is that it won't be part of the  
document outline. (Why shouldn't it?)

What it provides over using a paragraph preceding the list is... well, I'm  
not sure, but apparently the list caption is not considered to be a  
paragraph by authors.

I tried to find use-cases for list headers, where it is desired that they  
not be part of the document outline. The people discussing in the  
aforementioned thread could not provide any real use-cases, AFAICT.

One use-case could be to use a list as a figure of sorts, but then we  
already have <figure>, so we could just allow lists to go in <figure> and  
then we can give them captions. (It doesn't cover nested lists though.)

Are there other use-cases that warrant the inclusion of a "list header"  
element?

> It would have been
> really nice if it was in 4.0 and then 1.x, but better late then never.
> It's always been annoyed at having the choice of bare text (a pain to
> style and script) in the li, followed by a block element, or a
> semantically useless span.  This would be especially helpful since
> most of the list elements seem to not be sectioning elements, thus
> have no way to do the equivalent:
>
> <ol>
>   <lh>A list on stuff</lh>
>   <li>I, Item</li>
>   <li>
>      <ol>
>        <lh>Item, the God</lh>
>         <li>Plot synopsis</li>
>         <li>Characters</li>
>         <li>Stunning conclusion</li>
>      </ol>
>   </li>
> </ol>

How is this better than the following?:

    <h1>A list on stuff</h1>
    <ol>
     <li>I, Item</li>
     <li>Item, the God
      <ol>
       <li>Plot synopsis</li>
       <li>Characters</li>
       <li>Stunning conclusion</li>
      </ol>
     </li>
    </ol>

(Or using <p> instead of <h1>?)

-- 
Simon Pieters