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Bug 10953 - Clarify what word the "s" element represents ("s"trike?)
Summary: Clarify what word the "s" element represents ("s"trike?)
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other other
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on: 10862
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2010-10-01 10:14 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2010-10-05 13:37 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description contributor 2010-10-01 10:14:56 UTC
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-s-element

Comment:
Clarify what word the "s" element represents ("s"trike?)

Posted from: 85.223.116.170
Comment 1 Norman Walsh 2010-10-01 20:19:06 UTC
Given "ins" and "del", isn't "strike" a better name in any event?
Comment 2 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-10-05 01:17:45 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: It represents "contents that are no longer accurate or no longer relevant".

If you mean "what does 's' stand for", it doesn't stand for anything. It's like "hr", "dl", "address", or "div", the name is a historical artefact. The spec doesn't expand any of the element names for exactly this reason.
Comment 3 Norman Walsh 2010-10-05 13:37:26 UTC
I don't know about the original commentator, but I'm not satisfied.

The STRIKE and S elements are deprecated in HTML 4, I wouldn't have expected them to appear in HTML 5 at all. Strike outs seems more like a stylistic choice associated with rendering a DEL than something warranting an element in their own right.

But I'm new to the group, perhaps there's consensus to add an element to represent struck out text. Even in that case, what's the motivation for deliberately giving it a name so short that it isn't even vaguely illustrative of its purpose?

I understand that the choice of names is largely irrelevant in a purely technical sense, they're just tokens, and I understand that there are some short names. 

I also understand that short names are preferable, at least to some people, at least for hand-authored markup, for common elements. Yes, "p" is a better choice than "para".

But if an element for struck out text is desirable, I strongly prefer the name STRIKE to the name S.