On 8 Mar 2007, at 19:09:52, Paul Novitski wrote:
The HTML spec makes it explicitly clear that the relationship
between term and description can be interpreted more broadly than
merely terms and their definitions:
"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." [1]
In a dialog, the speech does not define the speaker; rather, they
mutually inform one another to constitute a data record of closely
associated fields. I suggest that the DT/DD relationship is
similar to the TH/TD relationship of "head" and "datum."
In my view, the spec is far from clear at that point: it states that
it is a definition list, explains how it is to be used to mark up
terms and their definitions, and then suddenly turns around and gives
us carte blanche to do pretty much anything we like with it. Note
that this is mentioned as being "for example", so should IMHO be
considered informative, not normative. In terms of the semantics of
"term" and "definition", it makes no sense at all.
Also note that this "example" is not present in the current XHTML 2.0
Working Draft, which might reasonably be assumed to seek to clarify
those areas of previous standards which have been found to be less
than perfect expressions of the intent of the authors.
As Jukka K. Korpela commented about this matter on the W3C's www-html
list a couple of years ago, they name it a duck, and then say it can
be used as a cow: "Another application of a duck is for milking..." [1]
Regards,
Nick.
[1] <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005May/0111.html>
--
Nick Fitzsimons
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/
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