[whatwg] Suggest making <dt> and <dd> valid in <ol>

[Ian Yang]

2012/7/16 Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela at cs.tut.fi>

> 2012-07-16 5:36, Ian Yang wrote:
>
>> Imo, <ul> means the order of the items is unimportant, not browsers can
>> render the items in any order.
>>
>
> But if the order is unimportant, there still _is_ an order. Being
> unordered would be something else.


The "order" you are referring to here is just the sequence of writing <li>(s)
into the <ul>. That's not the actual meaning of the order of list items and
is unimportant.


And what would it matter to indicate the order as important if you only do
> that in markup, without affecting rendering, search engines, etc., at all?
> It's like invisible ink in a book. If it is somehow relevant to say that
> the order is unimportant, you have to, well, *say* it (in words).
>

Because as a coder, my main concern is whether the meaning of the code I
write is correct or not. If the order is unimportant, I write <ul>, and my
job is done. As for default browser rendering, search engines, etc ...
That's not my main concern.



> The only reason for this "unordered" list idea (a list is by definition
> unordered; a set, or a multiset, is not) is the willingness to keep <ul>
> and <ol> in HTML (it would be very impractical to omit one of them) without
> admitting that they were introduced, and are being used, simply for
> bulleted and numbered lists. So this resembles the confusing play with
> words regarding <i> and <b>.
>

At first, maybe they were introduced and misused by some people because of
their default renderings. They anyway possess meanings in their names. And
nowadays they are used by their meanings instead of their default rendering.

But your opinion does remind me of the <small> element. That element is a
perfect example of introducing and using an element simply for its
rendering. Unlike <ul> and <ol>, it's not meaningfully named at all.
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of recycling a deprecated element. If we need
an element for side comments, we could introduce <comment> or <c>. If we
need an element for document info, we could introduce <info>. That would
make HTML elements more meaningfully named.


Sincerely,
Ian Yang