Re: DI element [Re: html 5 and accessibility issue]

Fair enough, as it was pointed out, this particular case is fairly well 
understood under HTML 4 and will be clearly defined under 5, but as 
Robert Burns so artfully phrased the issue:
"providing rich hierarchical structured mechanisms within the languages 
will also facilitate use-cases we can't think up"

DI may not actually change the semantics of groups of <dt>s and <dd>s 
but it will make it harder for content authors to mis-interpret, and 
provide a more robust/flexible language for the future (as <dl>s without 
<di> groups could then be deprecated).

This is not a radical idea, its stolen straight from the pages of XHTML2 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-list.html#edef_list_di), and as pointed 
out by Thomas Broyer, has been discussed previously 
(http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005-March/003160.html)

On the whole the idea seemed fairly well received on the list, I'm not 
sure why it didn't make it in at that point.


Bottom line is: It takes the /implied/ semantics of definition lists and 
makes those relationships /explicit/, at no harm to content authors, 
user-agents or you!


I think its worth a rethink.


Thanks for discussing the idea.
Cheers,
Andrew Ramsden



Andrew Sidwell wrote:
> Andrew Ramsden wrote:
>> This may be off-topic for "html 5 and accessibility", but I agree with
>> your assertion that a di element would clarify the semantic relationship
>> between dt and dd elements.
>>
>> The specific use-case of dl that I see as ambiguous without a di element
>> is:
>> <dl>
>>     <dt></dt>
>>     <dt></dt>
>>     <dd></dd>
>> </dl>
>>
>> Does this represent a two terms (one without a definition), or a single
>> term with two possible term variations?
> 
> In what way is it a definition term if it's not used as part of a
> definition?  The only common-sense answer is that both terms share the
> same definition.
> 
> Andrew Sidwell
> 
>

Received on Monday, 2 July 2007 08:40:42 UTC