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

Wed Apr 2 06:48:59 PDT 2008

Nicholas Shanks wrote:

> 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>

Right. Coming from the SGML world, that's called "paired elements"
and they're usually linked through id and idref. That's how a range
should be represented and a single selection is a range.

> 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?

Managing that in an editor would be a true nightmare. Please, please,
please no.

</Daniel>