OK, now that I look at it more closely, I see that there is some
novelty in the proposal. But why throw out the existing markup? Why
not just add to it?
|Rationale
|
|I believe that modifying the list concept to a single generic element
|will eliminate the current and future need for differently named HTML
|elements to identify different ways to present lists
The distinction between <ol>, <ul>, and <dl> is not just presentation,
if you ask me. They are distinct communications idioms.
So allow me to suggest alternatives to your examples in
http://www.sandia.gov/sci_compute/lists.html
|Definition List
leave it as is. Clearly, this example shows no novelty.
|Menu List
MENU/DIR arguably never belonged in HTML. The cited html3-ism:
<UL PLAIN>
looks happy to me. After this example, you write:
|Comments
|
| No PLAIN attribute is required, simply the absence of any LIH
| elements. This is the simplest type of list, and is the simplest
| markup.
This is just bad language design, if you ask me. Clearly, bulleted
lists are the most common _usage_, hence it should have the simplest
markup. I think you're guilty of thinking too much like a programmer
-- especially in this case -- but throughout this proposal.
|Ordered List
|
|Current Ordered List Mechanism
| <OL>
| <LI>Get in boat.
| <LI>Untie from dock.
| <LI>Put up sail.
| </OL>
|Proposed Ordered List Mechanism
| <LIST>
| <LI><LIH><NUM SEQNUM=1>. </LIH>Get in boat.
| <LI><LIH><NUM>. </LIH>Untie from dock.
| <LI><LIH><NUM>. </LIH>Put up sail.
| </LIST>
Ack! Clearly a loss.
| <LIST>
| <LI><LIH>Step <NUM SEQNUM=1>. </LIH>Get in boat.
| <LI><LIH>Step <NUM>. </LIH>Untie from dock.
| <LI><LIH>Step <NUM>. </LIH>Put up sail.
| </LIST>
so now we get to something that's not expressible in HTML 2.0.
The <NUM> element might make an interesting proposal by itself,
without all the other noise. So we might write:
<ul plain>
<LI>Step <NUM SEQNUM=1>. Get in boat.
<LI>Step <NUM>. Untie from dock.
<LI>Step <NUM>. Put up sail.
</ul>
but then you lose some of the alignment. So we might write:
<dl compact>
<dt>Step <NUM SEQNUM=1>.<dd> Get in boat.
<dt>Step <NUM>. <dd>Untie from dock.
<dt>Step <NUM>. <dd>Put up sail.
</dl>
The tricky part about NUM is when the <num> element occurs much before
the element it refers to. It introduces two-pass formatting (if you've
got a way around that, you should definitely put it in the proposal).
| <LIST>
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Fruit
| <LIST>
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Bananas
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Pears
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Apples
| </LIST>
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Nuts
| <LIST>
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Pecans
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Walnuts
| <LI><LIH><LD></LIH>Cashews
| </LIST>
| </LIST>
Ack! Please no! :-)
| <LIST>
| <LI><LIH><IMG HREF="banana.gif"></LIH>Bananas
| <LI><LIH><IMG HREF="pear.gif"></LIH>Pears
| <LI><LIH><IMG HREF="apple.gif"></LIH>Apples
| </LIST>
This one needs addressing. But isn't the obvious markup already in the
HTML 3 draft?
<ul>
<LI src="banana.gif">Bananas
<LI src="pear.gif">Pears
<LI src="apple.gif">Apples
</LIST>
| Successively Revealed Outlines List
Aside from tricks with <num>, this reduces to some mechanism for
hiding portions of a document. Easily expressible in stylesheets
in combination with the class attribute. The HIDE attribute is
an alternative I could live with.
Dan