[whatwg] whatwg Digest, Vol 33, Issue 90

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 29 Dec 2006, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
>
> FROIDURE Nicolas wrote:
> >     - 2 attributes for <textarea> : max (like other fields) and type
> > (to specify a text mime type for the content edition bbcode, html,
> > xhtml, xbbcode etc...). It will be a good way to improve the quality
> > of the web by improving the quality of user interventions.
> 
> Already done, see maxlength and type at:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/web-forms-2/#extensions1
> 
> Although as I've pointed out before, MIME types are not a sufficiently 
> specific tool: they don't differentiate between different versions of 
> HTML, can't suggest microformats, can't differentiate between full 
> documents and fragments, and so forth. Also BBCode, XBBCode, and the 
> various Wiki dialects don't even have MIME type. (Mind you, WHATWG could 
> actually submit some MIME type registrations to make type work a bit 
> better for the real web.)  So this area still desperately needs more 
> work.

I've dropped type="" (actually accept=""), as discussed in the past few 
weeks, because there was no interest from user agents, it didn't seem to 
solve a problem that wasn't solved by class="", and it has a series of 
difficulties (such as those described above).


> >     - 1 attribute for code : type.
> 
> Not done really. One option would be to add microformats to the Wiki for 
> different languages, I suppose. If you were to do so, I suggest 
> including version numbers. PHP4 should not necessarily be highlighted 
> the same as PHP5. Otherwise one might as well use type and MIME types, 
> just as for <script/>, although I suspect many languages lack MIME 
> types.

I enourage people to use the class attribute for this (or 
data-something="" if they want to us this for input to a script).


> >     - maybe an attribute for em and strong. Something like "degree" 
> > and a numeric value to notice the emphase degree of the sentences.
> 
> Whenever this semantic problem is raised, two alternatives are proposed: 
> either add an attribute to <em/> and <strong/> or specify the semantic 
> meaning of nesting <em/> and <strong/>. Web Applications 1.0 currently 
> goes for the second option:
> 
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-em
> 
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-strong
> 
> Question for the editor: how many <em/> equal one <strong/>?

They are orthogonal as defined now.


On Fri, 29 Dec 2006, FROIDURE Nicolas wrote:
>
> Maybe that the DTD syntax could be use. The official DTD for W3C 
> standards and a personal DTD for other languages. In all cases, i think 
> that bbcode, wiki and other 'easy' web languages with disappear when 
> browsers will include real WYSIWYG editors.

That's an interesting but somewhat expensive idea.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'