[whatwg] abbr inside of option

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Thu Apr 28 15:34:24 PDT 2011


On Thu, 28 Apr 2011, Jens O. Meiert wrote:
> > >
> > > Just curious: What is the reasoning behind the option element not 
> > > being able to contain abbr elements?
> >
> > What problem would this solve?
> 
> I think this question came up a few times, also in the context of the 
> “title” element; to try a very quick abstraction, it seems logical 
> that the content model of every non-void HTML element (with the only 
> exception of form elements?) should allow (most) phrasing content.
> 
> Having asked the question too for “title” at some point the 
> reasoning is that you could not express the meaning of these elements’ 
> contents otherwise. Or, why should “<h1><abbr>HTML</abbr></h1>” be 
> acceptable but “<title><abbr>HTML</abbr></title>” not be 
> permitted—in both cases, “HTML” is an abbreviation. (No need to 
> explain the situation around the “title” element again, I just like 
> the example.)

Ah, ok.

In that case, the restriction for both is for the same reason: it's to 
reduce the author's assumption that these elements will have any effect. 
In practice, they will not; UAs will often implement these elements using 
platform features that only accept a raw string.

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


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