Re: Input areas in <select> & <option>

Joe English (joe@trystero.art.com)
Fri, 9 Dec 94 22:50:47 EST

Peter Flynn <pflynn@curia.ucc.ie> wrote:
> > an OPTION, which can't be right (should allow %flow; minus #pcdata,
> > right?).
>
> I would say no... only straight text should be allowed in an <option>.
>
> But suppose I want italics in my option, or I want to make the option
> words explanatory by making them a link to something else?

If an <OPTION> element has no VALUE attribute, the default
is to use the element's content for the value. It's unclear
what HTML markup inside a 'name=value' pair should mean.

So even though this might make sense:

<OPTION value="foo bar">Would you like <i>foo</i> and <i>bar</i>?

this does not:

<OPTION>Would you like <i>foo</i> and <i>bar</i>?

Clearly, the second case should be illegal. That makes
the first case illegal too.

(Unless we want to change the de facto semantics of form
values from "textual data" to "HTML fragments". I don't
think that's desirable.)

Reason #11 why forms are broken. Is there any
hope of throwing them out and starting over?)

--Joe English

joe@trystero.art.com