[whatwg] Request: Explicit grouping within <dl>

[liorean]

I remember making an argument for this way back when XHTML2 still
looked like it could be the future for HTML...

<uri:http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2002Oct/0009.html>


On 26/05/07, Sander <html5 at zoid.nl> wrote:
> 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.

Well, if you ask me, the logical way is to allow nesting definition
items in the list. Say you have something like a Skype conversation
log, which conceptually looks about like this:

    <chatlog>
        <item>
            <poster>joe</poster>
            <item>
                <time>yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm</time>
                <message>Blah</message>
            </item>
            <item>
                <time>yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm</time>
                <message>Bleh!</message>
            </item>
        </item>
        <item>
            <poster>jane</poster>
            <item>
                <time>yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm</time>
                <message>SO true!!!!1111!1!11!!!1one!one1eleven</message>
            <item>
        </item>
    </chatlog>


But at the same time, you might want to support another chat log that
only inserts time stamps at certain intervals, like every five minutes
or so, but inserts attribution on every item...

    <chatlog>
        <item>
            <time>yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm</time>
            <item>
                <poster>joe</poster>
                <message>Blah</message>
            </item>
            <item>
                <poster>joe</poster>
                <message>Bleh!</message>
            </item>
        </messages>
        <messages>
           <time>fifteen minutes later</time>
            <item>
                <poster>jane</poster>
                <message>SO true!!!!1111!1!11!!!1one!one1eleven</message>
            </item>
        </messages>
    </chatlog>


The way I'd turn something like that into definition lists today
involves nesting lists in definition data. I'd like the definition
item for getting rid of the extraneous elements. For some cases the
timestams and posters could be consecutive definition terms, and the
messages consecutive definition datas, but there is no way to make one
definition term span several couples of term-data couples of elements,
which is needed for representing these example cases.
-- 
David "liorean" Andersson