On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 3:34 PM, <jgra...@opera.com> wrote: > Quoting Smylers <smyl...@stripey.com>: > >> James Graham writes: >> >>> Bruce Lawson wrote: >>> >>> > I'm struggling to understand the reasons for <hgroup>: wouldn't one >>> > or more h1..h6 elements wrapped in the same <header> imply just such >>> > a grouping without the need for such an element? >>> >>> <hgroup> affects the document structure, <header> does not. >> >> That explains _how_ they are different (as does the spec), but not _why_ >> it is like that. >> >> More specifically: >> >> * Are there significant cases where <header> needs _not_ to imply >> <hgroup>? Consider wrapping an <hgroup> inside every <header>; how >> many places has that broken the semantics? I could believe that most >> of the cases where a pager header appropriately contains multiple >> headings they are subtitles rather than subsections. > > The semantic that authors seem to want from an element named "header" is > "All the top matter of my page before the main content". That could include > headers, subheaders, navigation, asides (at least per the current definition > of aside which I think is silly, but I digress) and almost anything else. > Since the <header> can contain multiple distinct logical sections of the > document, each with their own headers, it makes no sense to implicitly wrap > its contents in <hgroup>.
James got it exactly. I, as an author, want an element that fills a role analogous to <article> in semantics, so I can trivially and obviously mark up that the section is just a prelude to my main content. In my own pages, when I use a <div #header>, it usually contains, in addition to the heading itself, some non-heading text and a nav or two. That latter bit especially would be inappropriate within an (implicit) <hgroup>. >> * Are there significant cases where <hgroup> will be useful outside of >> <header>? >> >> <hgroup> exists to allow for subtitles and the like. It's fairly >> common for documents to have these -- where it's likely there's use >> for a <header> element anyway. >> >> It's much less common for a mere section of a document to warrant a >> multi-part title; is that a case which is worth solving? If it is, >> would it be problematic to force authors to use <header> there? > > It seems highly odd to have <header> perform a dual role where sometimes it > means "section header" and sometimes it means "group of heading/subheading > elements". Much more confusing than one element per role. Section headers with subtitles lower down in the document hierarchy occur with a decent frequency in my pages. The document itself would have a complex <header> (possibly with an <hgroup>), then the <article> would have an <hgroup> of its own. ~TJ