Re: DL content model

Brian Behlendorf (brian@wired.com)
Wed, 16 Nov 94 15:08:13 EST

On Wed, 16 Nov 1994, Peter Flynn wrote:
> Bert wrote:
> > I haven't seen (DT+|DD+)* yet, wouldn't that express everything people
> > asked for: one or more terms with one or more definitions?
>
> One would have thought so, but the reality is that DL has been used for
> other purposes, so if we are trying to make the DTD reflect practice as
> well as intent, we need to handle cases where there are zero or more DTs
> and DDs.
>
> I know of many files where DD has been used on its own to make some text
> indent.

..which is contrary to the intent of DL course. Content providers can't
exactly be faulted for misusing semantic tags for their presentational
effects since they don't otherwise have control over presentation -
my own site violates just about every rule in the book (I've had a lot of
fun with the validation service, and Arena's "Bad HTML" warnings :)
However, the fact that people are misusing HTML now shouldn't be an
excuse to officially "allow" that.

So I initially thought that (DT+|DD+)+ would be proper - but then someone
brought up the case of dynamically generated lists and that empty <DL>'s
would be good in that case. If so, then does it make sense to suggest
that there be no non-white-space between <DL> and </DL> if there's no
<DT> anywhere?

Brian

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