[whatwg] confusion between article and summary; editorial change suggestion

Bruce Lawson brucel at opera.com
Wed Apr 14 14:33:13 PDT 2010


The definition for article says "The article element represents a  
self-contained composition in a document, page, application, or site and  
that is intended to be independently distributable or reusable, e.g. in  
syndication."

This suggests that if you have a self-contained composition that you do  
not intend to be distributable via syndication, you shouldn't use  
<article>.

Section says "Authors are encouraged to use the article element instead of  
the section element when it would make sense to syndicate the contents of  
the element" - here, the intent of syndication is diluted into "it would  
make sense to syndicate the content".

I suggest that article be amended to say something similar, eg "The  
article element represents a self-contained composition in a document,  
page, application, or site which would make sense if independently  
distributed or reused, e.g. in syndication." so that the two mentions of  
<article> match, especially given that Jeremy Keith has reported confusion  
between article and summary.


-- 
Hang loose and stay groovy,

Bruce Lawson
Web Evangelist
www.opera.com (work)
www.brucelawson.co.uk (personal)
www.twitter.com/brucel



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