Re: June 15 draft -- DL

David Morris (dwm@shell.portal.com)
Fri, 16 Jun 95 13:04:51 EDT

On Thu, 15 Jun 1995, Murray Maloney wrote:

> Joe English writes:
> > Daniel W. Connolly <connolly@beach.w3.org> wrote:
> >
> > > * added verbiage about DT, DD when they don't occur in pairs
> >
> > It now reads:
> >
> > > The content of a DL element is a sequence of DT elements and/or DD
> > > elements, usually in pairs. Multiple DT may be paired with a single DD
> > > element. Documents should not contain multiple consecutive DD elements.
> >
> > What about cases where a term has multiple definitions?
> > ...
> > <DT>markup
> > <DD>(n.) text or annotations added to a document to convey
> > information about it
> > <DD>(v.) to add markup to a document
> > ...
> >
>[...]
> The verbiage could go like this:
>
> The content of a DL element is a sequence of DT elements
> and DD elements, usually in pairs. However, multiple
> DT elements may be paired with a single DD element, and
> a single DT may be paired with multiple DD elements.
>
> I have probably overlooked some obvious reason why someone
> would want to have a <DT>+ without any corresponding <DD>,
> or vice-versa. I'm sure that some kind soul will point out
> the error of my ways. Thanks in advance. :-)

Well, a pragmatic concern I have has to do with rendering description
for the case of multiple <dd>s in a row. From a structure of
document perspective multiple <dd>s has appeal. From a what should
appear visually, its not clear to me.

Hence on the alter of 'current practice', I would vote for no change
in the current draft's intent. I'm personally not very satisfied
with current rendering practice so would rather defer providing more
required complications until we can take the time and reflect on the
verbage. Definition lists are almost tables and I can surely provide
a more satisfying <DL> appearance with the deployed table support
than I can with <DL> support. Hence, I would suggest that the
TABLE document/RFC might include <DL> as a candidate for improvement
as well. Or perhaps we have a clean-up RFC.

TO sumarize. I recommend for no change.

Dave Morris