[whatwg] Why is the legend element not categorized as flow content?

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2010, divya manian wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 8:40 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > In what sense is it listed under phrasing content?
> 
> The content model for the legend is stated as phrasing content in the 
> spec [1]

Oh it can contain phrasing content, yes. I thought you meant it was 
phrasing content itself. Sorry.


> > It's just supposed to be a child of <fieldset>, so it doesn't have any 
> > category at all.
> 
> Thanks, the general rule [2] that is given in the spec seems to include 
> almost every known HTML4 element as flow content, but then, legend 
> somehow is not a flow content (even though it fulfills the General 
> Rule).
>
> [2] "should have either at least one descendant text node that is not
> inter-element whitespace, or at least one descendant element node that
> is embedded content"

I think you are misreading this. It's not saying that anything that 
contains text is a flow content element, it's saying that anything that is 
a flow content element is supposed to contain text.


> I am trying to figure out if there is an easy way to know which elements 
> are flow or not other than referring to the spec for each element before 
> using.

You can refer to the index:

   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-index.html#element-content-categories

It lists all the elements in each category.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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