---------------- DTD Deficiencies ---------------- A collection of DTD 'deficiencies' that people have encountered, and would like either fixed or a reason for non-fixing given. Please read through, and add your user id to 'yea' or 'nay' to indicate your support or dissent. Dissent should be accompanied with a reason. 1) Allow links in titles ------------------------ Submittor: Ken Coar <20021118232801.A18830@Hydrogen.MeepZor.Com> Date: 2002-11-18 Yeas: jefft Nays: Summary: Allow things like: <link href="foo">title-text</link> 2) Allow
in titles ------------------------ Submittor: Diana Shannon <172286CC-FBBF-11D6-99AD-0030653FE818@apache.org> Date: 2002-11-19 Yeas: jefft, nicolaken Nays: Summary: "And while you're at it, **please** consider adding
to . And don't flame me. I know some may abuse it, but this is a common need in print-publishing (to add manual, readable breaks to certain types of titles/subheads). I'd want to use it -- judiciously -- for pdf files and a limited amount in html files." 3) Allow <p>'s inside <li> -------------------------- Submittor: Jeff Turner Date: 2002-11-20 Yeas: jefft Nays: Summary: Often it it would be useful to have multiple paragraphs inside a list item: <ul> <li> <p> ... </p> <p> ... </p> <p> ... </p> </li> </ul> I can see no reason why being a "list item" implies being limited to a single paragraph. 4) Allow <p>, <li>, <source> etc inside <dd> -------------------------------------------- Submittor: Jeff Turner Date: 2002-11-20 Yeas: jefft Nays: Summary: Related to the above request. Seems no reason why a Definition Description <dd> can't have multiple paragraphs, or anything else. Example: <dt id="Merit"><strong>Merit</strong></dt> <dd> <p> The concept of 'merit' is central to the Apache philosophy and community methodology. Merit is a qualitative and subjective term, referring essentially to attributes such as those below; however, it can probably be summed up as the combination of the worth of one's accomplishments and the respect of ones's peers. </p> <ul> <li>technical competence</li> <li>ability to get along with others</li> <li>positive contributions to discussions and code</li> </ul> <p> The acquisition of merit is a cumulative process; once acquired, it doesn't decay. It is possible to lose merit, though, by violating the community ethics, guidelines, or sensibilities. </p> </dd> 5) Allow <ol> and <ul> inside <p> --------------------------------- Submittor: Jeff Turner Date: 2002-11-20 Yeas: jefft, nicolaken Nays: Summary: Frequently I find myself wanting to create lists halfway through a paragraph: <p> Here are some main features: <ul> <li>...</li> <li>...</li> </ul> These features ... </p> Currently this is not allowed, as <ul> cannot be contained within <p> According to that font of wisdom, dictionary.com, a paragraph is "one of several distinct subdivisions of a text intended to separate ideas" and "typically deals with a single thought or topic" I think a single idea may validly be expressed with an unordered list, as above, and thus <ul> should be allowed within <p> ----- Update (2002-11-26): Apparently XHTML doesn't allow lists inside paragraphs. The reason why not might have something to do with avoiding "pernicious mixed content": http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/documentation/reference/html/entry.html However, Docbook allows <itemizedlist> inside <para>, and apparently this doesn't count as "pernicious mixed content", so I don't know what's going on. ----- 6) Allow <link> inside elements like <strong> --------------------------------------------- Submittor: Jeff Turner Date: 2002-11-28 Yeas: Nays: Summary: Use-case: <strong>no <link href="#Veto">vetos</link></strong> Seems innocent enough. 7) Allow Anchors everywhere --------------------------- Submittor: Jeff Turner Date: 2002-11-28 Yeas: jefft Nays: Summary: The DTD currently allows 'id' attributes on all elements, and elements below <body> (IIRC) will have them rendered to a HTML <a name="...">. Thus it would seem that <anchor> is completely unnecessary. The problem is, sometimes one wants multiple IDs for an element, but the XML spec doesn't allow this: Validity Constraint: One ID per Element Type No element type may have more than one ID attribute specified. Tim Bray's comment (http://www.xml.com/axml/notes/OneIDPer.html): "In my opinion, this rule should really have a "for compatibility" attached to it, because while it is a rule in SGML, I've never understood why an element shouldn't have two different IDs." Nor do I. Here is a use-case for multiple IDs, attempting to solve it with anchors: <dt> <anchor id="LazyConsensus"/> <anchor id="LazyApproval"/> <strong> Lazy consensus </strong> </dt> <dd>(Also called 'lazy approval'.) ..... Either we must allow anchors (hence multiple IDs) everywhere, or implement some hack to allow multiple Ids: <dt id="LazyConsensus, LazyApproval> ..... 8) Suggestion/Request by Ken Coar: is there any reason the dtd can't support an element that's meaningless except to the transformer, and executed non-recursively during transformation? something like: <pre> <include-verbatim src="sample.raw"/> </pre> Remarks (SNS) 1) That supposed transformer would have to wrap the included source in a CDATA section, and we can only hope ]]> does not appear in it. 2) Would characters in the included non-XML fragment need to be escaped on rendition? Is this to show sourcecode fragments or to include in-place verbatim HTML...? 3) Check what Eliotte R. Harold does w.r.t. XInclude (I remember him mentioning this once) -- $Revision: 1.5.2.1 $ $Date: 2003/01/03 15:58:26 $