[whatwg] Can <var> possibly work?

[Ozob the Great]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 6:29 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen at iki.fi> wrote:

> The use cases for <var> probably aren't strong enough to warrant its
> addition to HTML at this stage if it hadn't been in HTML already--you might
> as well use <i>. However, given that <var> has already been in HTML for a
> long time, it probably isn't harmful enough to make it non-conforming.
> Actually, its main harm is the opportunity cost of the debates about when
> it's appropriate to use it. :-/
>

I agree making <var> non-conforming is inappropriate.

Let me make a specific and concrete proposal. 4.6.14 should be changed to
read as follows:

The var element represents a variable. This could be an actual variable in a
programming context, or it could be a term used as a placeholder in prose.
Use of var in a mathematical context is deprecated in favor of MathML
content markup.

The example
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