On Oct 5, 2006, at 00:56, Simon Pieters wrote:
Which brings us to the next point: dialogue. The spec contains an
example[3] which suggests that <ol> is appropriate for dialogue.
I'm not convinced that it is. What makes a dialogue a list? While
the order of dialogue is important, so is the order of any other
paragraphs -- I don't think it should be emphasized in particular.
I agree that using <ol> for dialog is weird.
I think I'd mark up the dialogue like this:
<p> <cite>Costello</cite>
<q> Look, you gotta first baseman? </q>
<p> <cite>Abbott</cite>
<q> Certainly. </q>
...
I still think that <cite> should mean "title of work" and shouldn't
be used for people, but that's another discussion. (I also think that
<cite> lacks a proper use case that would justify its existence
instead of just using <i> for titles of works and <b> for names of
persons.)
Anyway, to my point:
HTML+ used <dl> for dialog. As far as default presentation goes, <dl>
is the best fit for marking up dialog. Yet, the semantic markup party
line is against it.
I think there are two reasons for insisting that <dl> shouldn't be
used for dialogs, i.e. that <dl> really is a definition list rather
than a generic presentational grouping device:
1) Saving face after years of such insistence.
2) Avoiding breaking software that collects term definitions from
<dl>s.
I am not a fan of #1-style reasoning. My guess is that case #2 is
already broken on the real Web.
Is there a good reason for not prescribing <dl> for dialogs?
--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
