[whatwg] OUTPUT tag: clarify purpose in spec?

[Ian Hickson]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013, Richard Kennard wrote:
> 
> Thanks for all the great work you do on the HTML 5 specification!
> 
> Can I ask for a little clarification in the spec? Specifically it says:
> 
>     "The output element represents the result of a calculation or user
>     action."
>     http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#the-output-element
> 
> It is my understanding (or hope!) that the output tag fills a hole in 
> form markup. For example, if this is the editable version of a form:
> 
>     <label for="name">Name:</label><input id="name" type="text" value="Bob">
> 
> Then this can be its read-only variant:
> 
>     <label for="name" value="Name:"><output id="name">Bob</output>

No, the readonly variant would be:

     <label for="name">Name:</label><input id="name" type="text" value="Bob" readonly>


> Essentially, I am taking 'result of a calculation' to include 'values looked
> up from database, REST call, etc'. Is that correct?

I guess. I meant more actual calculations rather than just lookups, but 
lookups can be the results of "user action", so...

There's a lot of <output> examples in the spec; do they help at all?

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