Jens,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are asking "Why is there no consistent
naming convention for HTML/XHTML elements?"  In other words, some element
names are full words (head,title,body,table,object,etc.), and some element
names are abbreviations (p,tr,td,ul,li,etc.).  I think this is a really good
point, and one that I don't think I've ever seen discussed on this list
before.  Does the W3C have any rules that it follows for the naming
conventions when adding an element?

Regards,
Peter Foti


>-----Original Message-----
>From: www-html-request@w3.org [mailto:www-html-request@w3.org]On Behalf
>Of Jens Meiert
>Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 12:44 PM
>To: www-html@w3.org
>Subject: Re: Shorten <object> in XHTML 2.0?
>
>
>
><irony>Sorry, but there are so many Harvard, Yale, Stanford 
>etc. students
>involved in this discussion, is nobody here who can propose a 
>real generic and
>consequent solution for it right now?</irony>
>
>In practice it's totally irrelevant if you use <object /> or 
><obj />, <image
>/> or <img />, <paragraph /> or <p /> (as long as it works), 
>but one (and
>maybe the most important) thing is missing: a consequent 
>naming. Why is there
><td />, but <object />, why is there <p />, but <title /> 
>(please, don't tell
>me any history or background...)? So I -- and I guess there 
>are some other
>people, too -- prefer one single way to name elements, and 
>then all discussion
>is over.
>
>
> Jens Meiert.
>
>
>
>> 
>> Masayasu Ishikawa <mimasa@w3.org> writes:
>> 
>> > Draft, but since the second Working Draft the spec introduced
>> > the Embedding Attribute Collection [1], which means any element can
>> > embed an external resource (such as image), not just 
>'object'.  Most
>> > simple image inclusions will be done through the 'src' and 'type'
>> > attributes, and only complex cases will be dealt by the 'object'
>> > element.
>> > 
>> > [1]
>>
>http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xhtml2-20030506/mod-attribute-coll 
ections.html#col_Embedding
>> 
>> Cute, but unwise.
>> 
>> I quote from the cited section 6.6:
>> 
>> : Examples:
>> : 
>> : <p src="holiday.png" type="image/png">
>> :     <span src="holiday.gif" type="image/gif">
>> :         An image of us on holiday.
>> :     </span>
>> : </p>
>> : 
>> : <table src="temperature-graph.png" type="image/png">
>> : <caption>Average monthly temperature over the last 20 
>years</caption>
>> :
>>
><tr><th>Jan</th><th>Feb</th><th>Mar</th><th>Apr</th><th>May</th
>><th>Jun</th>
>> :    
>> 
><th>Jul</th><th>Aug</th><th>Sep</th><th>Oct</th><th>Nov</th><th
>>Dec</th>
>> : </tr>
>> : <tr><td> 4</td><td> 2</td><td> 7</td><td> 
>9</td><td>13</td><td>16</td>
>> :     <td>17</td><td>17</td><td>14</td><td>11</td><td> 
>7</td><td> 4</td>
>> : </tr>
>> : </table>
>> 
>> With this design a user agent will waste time checking for non-empty
>> values of the src attribute for *every* inline and *every* 
>block level
>> element.
>> 
>> Doesn't processing strategy usually involve looking only at 
>particular
>> attributes of interest based on the name of the element?
>> 
>>                                     -- Bill
>> 
>
>
>-- 
>Jens Meiert
>
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