[whatwg] article/section/details naming/definition problems

[Divya Manian]

Hi all,

The IRC conversation that Jeremy Keith[1] highlighted was really useful.
>From there, this is my understanding of the differences between <section>
and <article>, forgive me if I am not rigorous in my usage of English:

1. section to "cut" or "section" different parts of the layout of the
webpage

2. article is used for each similar content, each blog post in a set of (1
or more) blog posts, each user member avatar in a set of user member
avatars, each product in a set of products.

3. articles always occur within a section except in rare occasions when
there is nothing else other than the specific article on the page as
content.  

The usecase that leaps to me is:
HTML 4:

<div class="maincolumn">
<div class="item">
News entry 1
</div>
<div class="item">
News entry 2
</div>
</div>

HTML 5:
<section class="maincolumn">
<article>
News entry 1
</article>
<article>
News entry 2
</article>
</section>


I often use <div class="item"> to mark up the smallest large unit of content
that is repeatable and my understanding is that <article> would be a good
replacement of that.

If that is the case, we can use <article> to mark up each comment, or each
blog post. But I think <article> is quite a newsroom lingo which might not
be appropriate for marking up a product or a user member avatar.
 
Would this be a good description of <article> and <section>?

Apologies if this seems like noise.

Regards,
Divya


[1] http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090916

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