At 6/4/2007 07:22 PM, Steve Green wrote:
Day after day in this forum some people seem to be hell-bent on abusing the
standards like this? Why?
I think the 'why' is important enough to merit mention; it's not just
a rhetorical question.
Most of us are trying to create the most sensible pages we can. To
do so we're using an incredibly sparse markup language with a few
very specific elements, a few vague ones, and enormous gaps between them.
We've all wished fruitlessly for HTML to support our efforts to mark
up content more semantically, and we're always looking for better
ways to do it. No wonder there are surges of effort to create the
next generation of HTML.
Some elements of markup must be taken quite literally ("horizontal
rule") while others are quite loose and metaphorical ("span"). Human
language at its very essence is metaphor. Depending on how you
squint at it, the spec can be read very loosely (the road to ruin) or
very strictly (the road to the padded cell). While the DTD is strict
in its stipulations of which elements can contain which others, the
spec's verbal descriptions of markup elements and the examples given
are often interpetable from a variety of angles, as we see every day
in this list. There's lots of wiggle-room in the HTML spec for
wishful, well-meaning web developers to seek elements that can be
comfortably stretched to cover a usage that might not have occurred to others.
I often wonder what the authors of the HTML spec feel when they
observe us web developers arguing over usage. A certain pride, for
sure, but also perhaps some embarrassment... on our behalf or their
own? So often we treat the document like it's a holy writ passed
down from on high, while it's really just a document written by some folks.
The description of the definition list is a prime example. Few of us
question the meanings of the words "definition" and "list" and yet
the atuhors of the HTML spec opened the door wide, first using the
alternative term "description" for the DD and then adding, "Another
application of DL, for example, is for marking up dialogues, with
each DT naming a speaker, and each DD containing his or her
words." The authors explicitly encouraged us to interpret the
element name "definition list" to include structures that are not
strictly definitions and even arguably lists. If a dialog can be
marked up as a list then why not use an unorderd list markup for a
series of paragraphs? (Please don't misunderstand me -- I'm not
arguing here that we ought to do so, I'm merely sketching the anatomy
of our disagreements.)
The vast majority of the debates of markup usage and semantics I read
-- and take part in -- turn on this very point: how metaphorically
may we interpret the spec? I have sympathy for those who want to
stretch the small, threadbare blanket of HTML to try to cover our
broad work; and I have sympathy for those who argue that a consistent
interpretation of the spec is necessary to build a solid body of
markup for the content-parsers of today and the future. We are all justified.
Perhaps our debates would be kinder if we ruminated longer on our
shared plight: abandoned on a barren planet with only fifty kinds of
parts with which to build everything we need.
Regards,
Paul
__________________________
Paul Novitski
Juniper Webcraft Ltd.
http://juniperwebcraft.com
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