This is what happens when uni students are on holidays and have nothing
defined set to do! ;)
Lachlan Hunt, Peter Firminger et al. was talking about the use of <br />
for addresses, (and I am not saying they are right or wrong!!!), I just
want to explore an idea I had while reading their posts.
I've been thinking about marking up addresses, since the question came
up yesterday. I have checked the archives, and either my search-fu is
weak, or I can't find this material in it. Some have said some of what I
have also said here. I am not deliberatly plagiarising them, as I wrote
those bits before I had finished reading all the archives on this
subject, that I could find. :) But I did read the archives!!!!
Jukka K Korpela talks about it a bit
(http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/address.html) but makes his
decision on presentation, rather than semantics. Should we make
decisions about mark-up based on default presentation for non-css
browsers? There are hints towards what I'm suggesting in the responses
to Dan Cederholm's Simplequiz
(http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/08/04/sq.html).
What I actually am saying:
Addresses used to have punctuation at the end of every line, to denote
the end of that line, until the habit faded out, and Australia Post
complained that their machines got confused. (Good example of the end
user having to change their ways to suit service provider!) I think that
when we read addresses aloud to others, we respect the former
punctuation and add pauses, so that the listener can know that one part
has finished and we are beginning another. Taking Lachlan Hunt's
example, he has marked up the address as a paragraph with line breaks,
and delimited by commas. But woudn't that semantically be the same as :
<p>123 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia,</p> which is
essentially a comma delimited list?
I think that an address can be considered as a list of instructions, in
a specific order, to find our location, or to send to a location we can
find. Kind of like a recipe.
Step one: Make sure you send the package to me, and not to another
member of my household.
Step Two: My household is number 123 on George Street,
Step Three: Which is in the suburb of Sydney,
Step Four: within the state of NSW,
Step Five: with a postcode of 2000,
Step Six: and that is all in Australia.
If we were either Adrian Mole or JK Rowling, we may add further steps
for "The World, The Universe."
Taking Lachlan Hunt's example (with the addition of a name):
<p>
Joe Bloggs,<br>
123 George Street,<br>
Sydney NSW 2000<br>
Australia
</p>
Couldn't that be marked up something like (the name could be changed to
a heading or something):
<ol class="street-address">
<li class="name">Joe Bloggs</li>
<li class="street">123 George Street</li>
<li class="suburb">Sydney</li>
<li class="state">NSW</li>
<li class="country">Australia</li>
</ol>
And with a little bit of CSS, make it look 'right' (remove bullets,
positioning, etc)?
What do you think (other than I should find myself something more
productive to do)?
I really enjoy reading and being part of this list, it makes me think
about all sorts of things I would never have given any consideration to
previously! So thank you all! :)
Kat
NB. I mean no offence or harm by this to anyone, and I'm sorry if it
causes any offence. I know that this kind of discussion can become
heated, and has done in the past, and that some have very strong ideas
about how this is best done. I'm not criticising anything, I want to ask
people on this list, who I greatly admire, and respect, their opinions.
******************************************************
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
******************************************************
