Christoph Päper wrote:
Matthew Raymond:
Christoph Päper wrote:
If you're going to quote someone, don't remove portions of the quote
without indicating you have done so.
Please, I used "(...)" (because we were discussing semantics not CSS
capabilities) and the rest is just obviously shortened.
You did not use square brackets ("[", "]") which are the standard
for such abbreviation of quotes. People use standard parentheses all the
time in messages, so it's not an effective way of indicating that you
changed the quote. Heck, I wrote what you were quoting and I didn't even
pick up on it until you mentioned it now.
Yes. It's just like
Foo
<br>
Bar
versus
Foo
</p><p>
Bar.
The first would yield the following:
| Foo
| Bar
The second would yield this:
| Foo
|
| Bar
You are thinking way to presentational! Who says there has to be an
empty line (or a margin of 1em) between paragraphs? But if you like,
you can replace that instance of 'br' with multiple ones.
I was pointing out the presentation, but in part it was to show that
the semantics behind the presentation wasn't the same. In fact, a better
example would be to use a fictional <line> element:
| Foo<br>Bar
...Versus...
| <line>Foo</line><line>Bar</line>
A <br> element does not necessarily indicate the end of a paragraph.
You might argue it's purely presentational (as you could with <line> for
that matter), but that doesn't make it a way of separating two
paragraphs... Or at least not unless you use more than one, and even
then you're assuming there has to be space between paragraphs.
That's why I said that you could also use 'class' on 'p' instead of
'div' around 'p' to do the grouping.
So now the web author not only am I forced to define sections and CSS
for the sections just to get a separator, but I have to give the
sections names as well...
No, you don't have to. You could class the sections /additionally/ or
the paragraphs /instead/ (or additionally).
Actually, while the author is probably using <p> elements, he/she
may or may not be using classes (which would be /additional/), and
he/she will definitely not be using classes for any kind of hyperlink
anchor. Also, the presentation of a separator would still require CSS in
this case, so you end up writing more in any case and for both XHTML and
CSS documents.
If I want to treat a chapter as one big, flat section, and the only
exception is where I have the separator, then it makes perfect sense.
We're running in circles. I can't see a semantical reason for doing so
(i.e. nobody provided one)
Actually, you did. You suggested that it's meaning was to indicate
the beginning of one section and the start of another. The heading
elements (<h1>, <h2>, et cetera) has similar semantics.
and thus don't see the reason for a
'separator' (or 'hr') element type in XHTML.
I really don't see a reason for XHTML 2.0. I think the best of it
will get absorbed into "HTML5", and XHTML 2.0 itself will be forgotten.
That said, people clearly use separator elements extensively in web
pages now. Forcing them to use a different, more difficult standard for
the same purpose because you want marginal improvements in the structure
of the markup just isn't going to work. Vendors are simply going to turn
around and implement XHTML 2.0 + <separator>.
