----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Glazman" <glazman@netscape.com>
Subject: l element (was: more xhtml 2.0 comments)


> After a quite long IRC chat with fantasai and Ian Hickson, I finally see
> some interest in the l element.
> Well, not really, since I still think ol/li and div are enough, but I
> can live with it :-)

It seems to me that <div>foo</div> can perform the same function as
<l>foo</l>, can it not? The only difference is that 'div' is an
inappropriate name for an element to markup a line of text.

> I strongly recommend (a) a clarification of the definition of the l
> element (b) another name, this one being too confusing with 1 and i, and
> intrinsicly too confusing because a "line" has multiple meanings in
> English having different visual rendering (and that's not the case in
> other languages).

I have argued this point before. I still believe that <l> can easily be
confused with <i>, even if it is fairly obvious that they are performing
different tasks (and <i> is not in the specification anyway). I had argued
for <line> to be reinstated, but I see the wisdom in Daniel's words. 'Line'
can mean different things to different people.

> This element meant to serve as a replacement for <br/>, I still think it
> will too drastically complexify wysiwyg editors. I still totally
> disagree with the removal of <br/>.

As far as I am concerned, the only difference between <l>foo</l><l>bar</l>
and foo<br />bar is that the <l>...</l> container provides an easy
presentational hook, much like <sentence>...</sentence> or <word>...</word>
might do.

If I am correct in thinking that the <l>...</l> element has the same
behavior as <div>...</div>, why not remove BOTH from the specification and
use <container>...</container> (or some other appropriate word/abbreviation)
that accomplishes both tasks instead?

Simon Jessey

w: http://jessey.net/blog/ 
e: simon@jessey.net