[whatwg] Thoughts on HTML 5

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

2008/5/13 Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch>:

> On Tue, 13 May 2008, Paweł Stradomski wrote:
>
 [...]

> > Perhaps <talk> ? Short and simple, although not exactly equal in meaning
> > to <dialog>.
>
> That's probably the best suggestion so far, but I'm still not convinced
> it's really much better than <dialog>. I think it has at least as many
> other interpretations (e.g. what we call a "talk" over here is really a
> slide show).
>

Honestly, though, are we concerned that people will think a <talk> element
in html refers to a slideshow?  The ambiguity of <dialog> occurs because
there is a very reasonable and natural interpretation for the element name
within the context of web applications that happens to be completely wrong.
<talk>, while certainly ambiguous in some ways, is extremely clear within
the context of a web application.  There is no other major existing entity
or idea with the same or similar name for it to clash with.

Plus, it's easy to spell, easy to remember, neither pretentious nor overly
casual (useful both for IRC and Shakespeare!), and hits the intended meaning
of the element (modulo the slight ambiguity) very well.  From what I can
tell, that's the entire checklist of objections that have been raised over
previous name suggestions.  <talk> seems to pass with flying colors.

~TJ
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