[whatwg] Request: Explicit grouping within <dl>

Sat May 26 10:04:25 PDT 2007

Ian Hickson schreef:
> Consider a paragraph with two sentences, each with emphasised text. They 
> both are related to different sentences, but there's no indication of that 
> in the DOM if you only look at the childNodes list.
>   
But the sentences themselves are no seperated childNodes and therefore 
this is not comparible to a <dl> where the <dt>s are seperated from one 
another. Then again, in a paragraph you can use <span> if you need to 
separate individual sentences and their childNodes from other sentences. 
This is not possible in a <dl>.
But given your example, something along the line of...

    <dt>
       term
       <dd>description</dd>
    </dt>

... would be a sufficient grouping as well if you ask me. This doesn't 
offer the possibility to specify more than one term per grouping though.

> It's the same reason that we have optional tags, like </p> and 
> </li> -- there's no need to be verbose, only unambiguous.
>   
So <html>, </html>, <header>, </header> and </body> can all become 
deprecated then?
But you insist: </di> could be optional as well ;-)

> I don't see how the current DOM isn't "well defined", nor can I see why 
> adding more redundant elements that don't clarify the disambiguate the 
> meaning at all is the "best way". In fact, <di> would only introduce more 
> ways for authors to get it wrong, IMHO.
>   
Maybe I don't always choose the best words as english is not my native 
language.

As for the argument of authors getting it wrong... making things more 
explicit will probably only make it easier to comprehend.

cheers,
Sander