[whatwg] <di>? Please?

[Gray Zhang]

<dl> (and <di> in this discussion) refers to **definition**, but in most
cases above, it should be a key-value pair rather than a term-description
pair, the former is more general in semantic, so I think we should have a
general purpose key-value pair element such as <pair>, <pn> (pair name) and
<pc> (pair content), in such case a user info form could be:

<pair>
  <pn>Username:</pn>
  <pc>John Smith</pc>
</pair>
<pair>
  <pn>Birth:</pn>
  <pc>2011-01-01</pc>
<pair>
...

This is more symantically structural correct, <pn> should be a phrasing
element while <pc> is a flow element so you can put flow/phrasing content
in <pc>. Although styling <pair> to aligned vertically/horizontally is a
matter of CSS but HTML gives a more definitive tag name

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Hugh Guiney <hugh.guiney at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 12:09 AM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > The only thing it adds to the grouping is the ability to have a
> subsection
> > that is then followed by more content from the subsection's parent
> > section. You couldn't do that with <hx> alone. However, for <section>
> > that's more of a negative than a positive, really (it makes more sense
> for
> > <aside>, <nav>, and <article>; <section> only allows it for consistency).
>
> In what ways is that a negative?
>
> > The spec doesn't generally include design rationale. (If anyone would
> like
> > to help maintain our rationale documentation, please let me know. We're
> > always in need of volunteers there.)
>
> What type of work is involved?
>
> > <di> doesn't exist. The ability to have multiple types of authoring style
> > isn't the reason for <section>'s existence. It's just a side-effect of
> now
> > having two different ways to mark up sections. It's not actually a good
> > thing in language design to have multiple ways to do something (despite
> > what Perl might have us believe!).
>
> HTML is full of multiple ways to do things: a run of text can avoid
> <p> and be the child of a <div> if the author prefers, a <footer> can
> be at the bottom or top of a section, authors can continue to use
> Microformats despite the existence of microdata, etc. If language
> idealism was a tenable goal on the Web then the WHATWG wouldn't exist
> and we would all be using XHTML 2 right now (which had <di>, for that
> matter).
>
> > <section> wasn't introduced as a stop-gap measure.
> >
> > There's no such thing as a stop-gap measure on the Web. We can't add
> > something then remove it. Once we've added something, it's part of the
> > platform, forever. That's why we have to be careful to only add things
> > that make sense on the long term.
>
> I only said "stopgap" because you posited CSS grouping as the ideal we
> should be striving for, when this method would work today. I actually
> don't think this should be taken out at a later time, as CSS grouping
> only addressing the issue of styling. It does not address the fact
> that—as I outlined in my original post—it is impossible with <dl>'s
> current parsing model to specify a named value followed by an unnamed
> value, since the unnamed value would be subsumed into the preceding
> group and be interpreted as an alternate value for it. The converse
> (an unnamed value followed by a named value) *is* possible. The spec
> claims that the order may or may not be important, yet this forces the
> author to write things in a specific order, which may violate what
> data they are trying to describe, or in what way. To illustrate:
>
> <dl>
> <dd>Nameless value</dd>
> <dt>Name</dt>
> <dd>Value</dd>
> </dl>
>
> <dl>
> <dt>Name</dt>
> <dd>Value</dd>
> <dd>Nameless value? Nope, alternate value for Name.</dd>
> </dl>
>
> Whereas wrapping either or both Name/Value and Nameless value in <di>
> would mirror what is already allowed, but free the author up to use
> the appropriate order rather than compromising semantics with multiple
> <dl>s or non-<dl>s.
>



-- 
张立理 GrayZhang
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