Again, I explicitly disagree. The last months I always thought XHTML 2 will
maybe be a reasonable improvement related to its ancestors, but observing
failing XHTML Minimal approaches and apparently accepted suggestions like this
are sign of something else.

What I think definitely to be prevented is an exaggerated markup and only
nice-to-have elements -- and that ain't only <qa /> including <qst /> and <ans
/>, but even any <firstname />, <lastname /> elements or absurdities like
<sentence />, <word />, <noun />, <verb />, <l> (letter) etc.pp.

Otherwise (hell, I'm somewhat disgruntled) add them all...! Add them, and
recommend each author and developer to almost use them all...! I always dreamed
of formatting my documents like this:


<snip />

<p>
 <qa>
  <qst>
   <sentence>
   <word><verb person="3rd"><l>I</l><l>s</l></verb></word>
   <space />
   <word><whatever><l>t</l><l>h</l><l>i</l><l>s</l></whatever></word>
   <space />
   <word><noun><l>n</l><l>u</l><l>t</l><l>s</l></noun></word>
   <punctuation type="questionmark" />
   </sentence>
  </qst>
  <ans>
   <sentence type="short">
   <word><whatever><l>y</l><l>e</l><l>s</l></whatever></word>
   <punctuation type="explanationmark" frequency="3" />
   </sentence>
  </ans>
 </qa>
</p>

<snip />


And, hahaha, then any search engine will list this as an 'very important
question' including its beautiful useless answer, because it's maybe presented
on a high-ranked W3 site...? No, please stop that nonsense and rather
concentrate on a useful markup restructuring... By the way, I commented this <qa />
discussion before, so don't simply ignore it by wishing such elements -- there
is definitely (even if resulting from my opinion) no need for this element
(group).



 Jens Meiert.


PS.
I'm sorry having been that 'impulsive', but it seemed necessary.




> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I don't think the <qa> element is a bad idea per se, but I'm wondering if
> a
> more generic associative/grouping element would be more useful.
> Essentially
> it would be like a definition list, only it associates flow content with
> flow content, instead of inline content with flow content. I'm thinking
> you
> could use it for all sorts of things besides the question/answer list;
> however, I can't immediately see many such potential usage cases. Where do
> we have relations between flow? How about annotated text?
> 
> One issue, of course, is what the implied semantics of such an element
> should be. Would it be commutative, or would the items in it have
> different
> roles like in definition lists? That is, should the first item be the
> "header" and the rest the "content," or should they be of equal
> "importance"? Sorry about the lack of propery terminilogy here.
> 
> I haven't given this much consideration; it was just something that
> occured
> to me as I read the discussion about <qa> and I thought you people might
> want to investigate it further. One thing I do know is that I do not want
> any element whose semantics are not clearly and thorougly defined, so keep
> this out of there unless you can think of clear uses for it. (Obviously, I
> don't need to tell you guys; I'm just covering my own back.)
> 
> Anyway, thank you for your time.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Daniel Brockman
> daniel@brockman.nu
> 


-- 
Jens Meiert

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