On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:47:56 +0200, Jesse McCarthy
<whatwg-2010...@jessemccarthy.net> wrote:
I think the new section and heading model in HTML 5 is a welcome
development...
I've actually essentially been doing it that way for years
-- eschewing H2-H6 and using DIV as a stand in for SECTION. I've
always considered the H1-H6 concept a mess, and thankfully that seems to
have been recognized by the people working on this spec.
FWIW, I asked TimBL about this a decade ago, and he effectively agreed
with you. The reason then was the same as now - backward compatibility (in
that case with an SGML dialect that was in relatively wide use, which had
the structure that got adopted into HTML).
The ISO dialect of HTML more or less adopts the style in the example you
quote, wrapping each logical section and its header in a div. But it
requires the use of heading levels.
My understanding is that in HTML 5 the following is acceptable, and at
least as acceptable as the alternative: use just H1, in conjunction with
SECTION; forego use of H2-H6 for the most part; and, allow heading level
to be determined by section nesting level. Is that correct?
It appears to be. HTML5 defines an outline algorithm, whereas in HTML4
none is actually formally defined, so you can use headings in whatever
level you see fit - although they are commonly used as markers to define
an outline/table of contents.
There are 2 code examples shortly after that passage, and the following
one is indicated as being preferable to the other one because the
sections are explicitly marked up instead of implied:
<body>
<h1>Apples</h1>
<p>Apples are fruit.</p>
<section>
<h2>Taste</h2>
<p>They taste lovely.</p>
<section>
<h3>Sweet</h3>
<p>Red apples are sweeter than green ones.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<h2>Color</h2>
<p>Apples come in various colors.</p>
</section>
</body>
My point is that the passage makes it seem like using H1 throughout vs.
using "elements of the appropriate rank for the section's nesting level"
are equally sound and encouraged, and the code sample uses H2 and H3.
I see why H2-H6 are retained for certain uses, but -- except in an
HGROUP -- there's no good reason to use H2-H6 when writing new code
with explicitly marked-up sections, is there?
Backwards compatibility - browsers, authoring tools, screen-scraping tools
that syndicate content, User Style Sheets to improve readability,
Assistive technologies, are all built today on the basis that different
levels of headings imply sectioning and subsectioning, whereas almost no
tools currently implement the new model.
It is true that the old model isn't ideal, especially for documents so
large and complex that they have more than half a dozen levels of content.
But up to that arbitrary limit, the current approach more or less works in
practice. It would be trivial to extend it to 9 levels by adding more
elements, and people could be expected to understand how that works and
upgrade their tools without re-implementing the algorithms. Going further
would require them to pick the difference between one- and two-digit
numbers, and the Web shows that (surprisingly) this is often too hard for
coders to get right, so there would be some period of brokenness still.
My conclusion is that the old model might just be a better bet for
continuing - on the basis that it is good enough (we can define the
algorithm that people already implement as easily as defining the section
algorithm) and the cost of the change might not be worth the benefit it is
expected to bring.
In that scenario isn't using just H1 throughout decidedly preferable to
using H2-H6? And if so, then as long as authors are being strongly
encouraged to mark up headings a certain way, wouldn't it be ideal to
state a clear preference for using H1 throughout and include a third
code example, indicated as the ideal:
...
IMHO, of course
cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group
je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
