[whatwg] small element should allow nested elements

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Fri Aug 14 02:09:57 PDT 2009


On Fri, 7 Aug 2009, Remy Sharp wrote:
> 
> The HTML 5 spec says:
> 
> "Small print typically features disclaimers, caveats, legal 
> restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used for 
> attribution, or for satisfying licensing requirements."
> 
> So I'm making a list of disclaimers for my site:
> 
> <ol>
>   <li>You must agree to this term</li>
>   <li>And this term too</li>
>   <li>And don't break this term</li>
>   <li>And don't forget the milk</li>
> </ol>
> <p>By reading this, you're agreeing to xyz</p>
> 
> To make this valid, and small print text, I need to individually wrap 
> the inner HTML of each inline element (li and p elements).  This is 
> wasteful and very much like the situation that we had with the a element 
> when we wanted the whole block to be clickable.

I wouldn't bother wrapping any of the above as small print. If you're 
structuring this enough that you have numbered lists and paragraphs and 
everything, then it's either not small print, or it shouldn't be.


Allowing elements to wrap both inlines and blocks is a huge can of worms 
which has caused all kinds of problems for <ins>, <del>, and <a>. I really 
don't want to start adding more elements to this list of complexity.

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



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