[whatwg] A plea to Hixie to adopt <main>

Tue Nov 13 09:25:37 PST 2012

> Explicit author markup would make such a task so much easier.

Only if every author marked up their code correctly. If some authors use
incorrect markup, then an algorithm would still be necessary for
determining if each usage was correct.

☺

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 5:11 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer
<silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com>wrote:

> By random chance, I just stumbled across this GitHub tool:
> https://github.com/visualrevenue/reporter
>
> It provides another heuristic approach - different from Scooby-Doo -  to
> determining what is the main content on a page. This is from a journalist's
> point of view and it is using a scoring and evaluation algorithm.
>
> I'm sure a lot of other people had to solve this problem as well and have
> done so in their own special way. Explicit author markup would make such a
> task so much easier.
>
> Regards,
> Silvia.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer <
> silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Jens O. Meiert <jens at meiert.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Should <main> be optional or required?
> >>
> >
> >> I’d deem an optional <main> to be nonsense because it suggests
> >> documents are inherently without goal, or focus.
> >>
> >> I’d deem a required <main> to be nonsense because we already have an
> >> (implied) <body> element, and because element proliferation doesn’t
> >> work in anyone’s favor.
> >>
> >
> > I can imagine it to become "required", if we mean by that that the
> > browsers will need to parse a page and either find a <main> element or
> > determine heuristically with the Scooby-Doo algorithm which part of the
> > page is actually the main part and then add that to its DOM. Since we
> have
> > the Scooby-Doo algorithm, we have a means to stay backwards compatible.
> >
> >
> > That <body> essentially means <main> always seemed reasonable to me.
> >> There are plenty of options for authors to add styling hooks if they
> >> need any, including <div role=main>.
> >
> >
> > You are correct - there is no need for this for styling. However, <main>
> > is actually not for styling, but to provide a direct markup of the
> > *semantically* main piece of content on the page. A Scooby-Doo algorithm
> > can only heuristically determine what that is - with <main> the Web Dev
> > gets an actual vehicle to point their finger explicitly rather than
> > implicitly saying in a hand-wavy manner that it's what remains if you
> take
> > away all this other stuff (that is: if we're lucky and that "other stuff"
> > has actually been marked up).
> >
> > Silvia.
> >
>