[whatwg] <ins>, <del>, and <mark> crossing element boundaries

Wed Apr 2 06:05:53 PDT 2008

On 2 Apr 2008, at 12:43 pm, Daniel Glazman wrote:
> Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>
>> I don't know what use this observation is. Maybe it means <ins>,  
>> <del>,
>> and <mark> shouldn't be HTML elements, but should be something else  
>> instead.
>
> Excellent post.

I concur. Excellent summary of how these elements are not  
hierarchical, but overlaid over the content of the document.
The only way I can see to have these in a well-formed DOM is by using  
empty elements for both the start and end.

<p>…<ins-start/>…</p><p>…<ins-end/>…</p>

However, that said, I believe more strongly that the ins, del and mark  
are metadata about the document, not specifically *part* of the  
document, and as such, perhaps they need to be moved completely out of  
flow, either into the <head> or into an auxiliary metadata file. They  
are seldom used AFAICT, not being mentioned on [1], and I think there  
is a valid reason for this lack of use which should be addressed. Are  
the elements necessary in HTML, should the information they convey be  
specified in another manner completely?

[1] http://code.google.com/webstats/

— Nicholas Shanks.

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