Graham wrote:
On 20 Apr 2005, at 7:53 pm, Thomas Broyer wrote:People wanting containers to carry their XHTML namespace declarations (in order to produce prefix-free documents) can choose among the inline-level span or the block-level div elements. If their content is already in a container (e.g. a single paragraph summary), they can use it as the xmlns holder.
This is exactly the benefit of the required and then discarded div. Without it, a significant proportion of users has to add chuff within their content that may change its meaning.
Not if:
- they're suggested to use span for the title and div elsewhere, or
- become aware they don't need such a container (whether it's part of the content or not) if they use prefixes (to the atom elements -even a simple "a:"-, so they don't have to modify their XHTML which is almost always served without prefix, as per the XHTML DTD and per HTML compatibility for non-supporting browsers)
And since the Atom spec uses the "atom:" convention to name the elements, I think a significant proportion of users will use the same convention will find the forced div container quite "bizarre" and *really* meaningless: "what the hell have I to add a div element? moreover in my titles which I expect to inline content? well, OK, this is just a discarded container, but, well, it's not really clean to transform inline content into block content and still have it behave as inline content, isn't it?"
I'm sincerely convinced people should *choose* to use a meaningless container to carry their namespace decl when they don't *want* to use prefixes and/or don't *want* to declare it elsewhere (e.g. on the atom:feed, atom:entry or atom:content). If they just imitate someone else's feed without knowing what is a div (block content) and use it for their XHTML title, they'll quickly learn that div is a block-level container that does not suit the title needs. They'll ask (themselves, Google or someone else), they'll find (use span or use prefixes) and they'll *choose*.
Note to Robert: I can't find anything meaningful on the bloggerDev group about "XHTML div" or "div container"... The link you gave me points to a one-message thread where someone uses 3 embedded divs for testing, but I can't find out how it's related to this discussion...
-- Thomas Broyer
