Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2007-04-17 à 13:05, Kristof Zelechovski a écrit :

Methinks we could easily overcome the semantic problems with the  


element if we renamed it to .


The problem I described is not about the meaning of , it's  
about structuring its content to accomodate various uses. In what way  
changing the name of  to  would solve the  
problem? I'm puzzeled.


Maybe you meant changing the name would make it easier to excluse all  
the cases were you need to include extra information beside the  
speakers and the words they have said. But wouldn't not addressing  
the problems as a solution make the exercice pretty useless?



Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.michelf.com/

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Kristof Zelechovski]

Methinks we could easily overcome the semantic problems with the 
element if we renamed it to .
Chris

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michel Fortin
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 6:54 PM
To: Elliotte Harold
Cc: WHAT working group
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

What I find silly with the current  proposal is that it just  
can't handle a lot of trivial cases which would otherwise be perfect  
use cases. It can't because you can't include non-spoken events to be  
inserted in the sequence.

But then if you allow non-spoken events another problem arise: are  
dialogs with no spoken part at all allowable? Should the document  
suddently become invalid when someone deletes the last bit of spoken  
text in a  and there remains only some timestamps or events?



Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.michelf.com/

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2007-04-08 à 14:42, Elliotte Harold a écrit :


Sounds a little redundant with ol (ordered list).


It is indeed a little redundant with , although it is more  
specific in the same sense than  is more specific than .



Also sounds needlessly confusing and hard to explain.


Having written the thing, I can agree with that.

I'm not sure we really need dialog, but at least it's simple and  
obvious to explain to people what it means. The more abstract and  
generic we get the harder this becomes.


I agree it is problematic.

What I find silly with the current  proposal is that it just  
can't handle a lot of trivial cases which would otherwise be perfect  
use cases. It can't because you can't include non-spoken events to be  
inserted in the sequence.


But then if you allow non-spoken events another problem arise: are  
dialogs with no spoken part at all allowable? Should the document  
suddently become invalid when someone deletes the last bit of spoken  
text in a  and there remains only some timestamps or events?


So I tried to fix this by explicitely marking it as a list of  
sequential events and allowing it to contain no spoken parts. But I  
can't disagree with any of the critisism it got: the result isn't so  
good especially because it's confusing. And I can't say I'm very  
pleased with the mixing of  and  with regular list items ().


My conclusion is: there shouldn't be a  element, or any  
element  encompassing the whole dialogue. We should let the dialog be  
merged with other textual parts. An element to markup the speaker and  
another to markup the spoken text and which authors can insert  
anywhere there are spoken parts is sufficient in my opinion, and  
would play pretty well with whatever needs to be inserted in the  
middle of the dialog.


As an example:

Me: ... and that was all I had to  
say.


Someone else enter the room.

Someone else: (thinking aloud) Wow! 



Otherwise, the spec tries to draw the line between what is and what  
is not a valid dialog... that should be the author's call in my opinion.



Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.michelf.com/

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 11:13 -0700, Kevin Marks wrote:

> My point is that this is breaking the expected containment of 
> in a - if you want a new structure purely for dialog, define
>  and keep .  I really fail to see why redefining a
> definition list as speech is less 'proper' than expanding the context
> of  slightly.

IMHO it's not a slight expansion. The  proposal does not
redefine dt or dd as speech. It provides a particular context for terms
(speakers) and definitions (speeches): a usage supported by the HTML
4.01 specification. (Again, I'd prefer specific elements for dialogues.)

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Kevin Marks]

On 4/10/07, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Kevin Marks wrote:

> I think the  example is a retrograde step. The
>  pattern seems much better than redefining
>  and , which will confuse XOXO parsers that try to be
> Postelian. Did I miss some reasoning here?

Fictional dialogs don't involve the excerpt and citation of external
sources, which is what q/blockquote and cite are properly for. Given the
HTML4 spec's own use of dt and dd, it's far from clear that any
redefinition is involved. That isn't to suggest that dt and dd are
optimal however.


My point is that this is breaking the expected containment of 
in a - if you want a new structure purely for dialog, define
 and keep .  I really fail to see why redefining a
definition list as speech is less 'proper' than expanding the context
of  slightly.

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

Kevin Marks wrote:

> I think the  example is a retrograde step. The
>  pattern seems much better than redefining
>  and , which will confuse XOXO parsers that try to be
> Postelian. Did I miss some reasoning here?

Fictional dialogs don't involve the excerpt and citation of external
sources, which is what q/blockquote and cite are properly for. Given the
HTML4 spec's own use of dt and dd, it's far from clear that any
redefinition is involved. That isn't to suggest that dt and dd are
optimal however.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Kevin Marks]

On 4/8/07, Elliotte Harold <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Michel Fortin wrote:

> So I propose a  element (sequential list) which can be used to
> replace  as well as other things. The proposal can be found here:
>

Sounds a little redundant with ol (ordered list). Also sounds needlessly
confusing and hard to explain. I'm not sure we really need dialog, but
at least it's simple and obvious to explain to people what it means. The
more abstract and generic we get the harder this becomes. Concreteness
is underrated among software developers, but widely appreciated by other
users.


I think the  example is a retrograde step. The
 pattern seems much better than redefining
 and , which will confuse XOXO parsers that try to be
Postelian. Did I miss some reasoning here?

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Elliotte Harold]

Michel Fortin wrote:

So I propose a  element (sequential list) which can be used to 
replace  as well as other things. The proposal can be found here:




Sounds a little redundant with ol (ordered list). Also sounds needlessly 
confusing and hard to explain. I'm not sure we really need dialog, but 
at least it's simple and obvious to explain to people what it means. The 
more abstract and generic we get the harder this becomes. Concreteness 
is underrated among software developers, but widely appreciated by other 
users.


--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2007-04-05 à 10:36, Simon Pieters a écrit :


I get a 404 for this URI.


Oops... sorry.




Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.michelf.com/

Re: [whatwg] Sequential List Proposal

[Simon Pieters]

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:16:11 +0200, Michel Fortin  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Following the discussion about the limitations of , I meditated  
about it a little and came up with the idea to generalize things a  
little more.


When we have a dialog intermixed with actions and other events (like  
"ABC leaves the chat room"), basically we have a sequential list of  
events, actions and spoken parts. And in my later example, the Canadian  
Parliament hansard, they're intermixed with timestamps at regular  
intervals and other notes regarding live translations. Again, this fits  
very well the concept of a list of different kinds of intermixed  
sequential events.


So I propose a  element (sequential list) which can be used to  
replace  as well as other things. The proposal can be found here:





I get a 404 for this URI.

Basically,  and  work just like they do in  currently,  
except that you can have more than one  following a .  is  
used for listing events other than speech and  is used to insert  
time marks where appropriate. And you don't need to have any spoken  
part, meaning you can use it for system logs, or historical timelines  
too by using only  and .


It seems to me like a sequential list with only  and  seems very  
much like , so why not use  for such cases? Authors have hard  
enough time to choose between the various abstract list elements already,  
let's not introduce more of them. :-)


--
Simon Pieters