On Sun, Dec 26, 2021 at 10:18:55AM -0800, Per Bothner wrote: > > > On 12/26/21 10:12, Patrice Dumas wrote: > > But there is nowhere where id in a lone element is proposed, so this > > argument is not very compelling not to use <a> for that purpose. <a> > > was used for that semantically before, while <span> is explicitely > > described as being relevant in relation to its content. For those > > reasons, it still seems to me that <a> is better than <span> and > > actually the best choice among elements. > > Using <a> this way makes me a little uncomfortable, but > I don't have a strong objection.
As far as I understand the original way to do this in HTML was with <a name="NAME"></a> but the "name" attribute has been deprecated (as you know) in favour of "id", so using <a id="NAME"></a> would be the natural thing to do. <a> is the "anchor" tag which can represent either the source or destination of a link (maybe confusing terminology but that's how the word "anchor" is/was used in the context of hypertext). Even if the WHATWG don't endorse it there seems to be clear precedent for using <a> this way. I don't feel strongly either way whether <span> or <a> is better but your argument against <span> seems valid.
