Re: June 15 draft -- DL

Murray Maloney (murray@sco.COM)
Fri, 16 Jun 95 13:58:25 EDT

David Morris writes:
>
> 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.

What should appear visually is what does appear -- we are documenting
current practice. Here is an example of what Mosaic does:

Term
Definition
Term
Definition
Term
Term
Term
Definition
Term
Definition
Definition
Definition
Definition
Term
Definition

It is not up to us to specify requirements for line spacing an such.
That is best left to UA developers and user preferences. The best
that we can say is that DD is a block element which is usually indented.

> 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.

I'm not clear what your point is. I am saying that the spec should
not say that multiple DT or DD elements are not allowed. They are.
Even the current DTD allows them. Whether UA developers should
present them in some other way is an issue that could be taken up
with the various UA developers.
>
> TO sumarize. I recommend for no change.

Got it.

Murray