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Posted by Davιmon on 12/30/00 11:44
Jukka K. Korpela arranged shapes to form:
> Toby Inkster <usenet200604@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> The mathematical equivalent for the UL element would be what is called a
>> "set".
>
> Since the UL element does not really mean an unordered collection (it would
> not be correct for a browser, or a server, or a proxy to transform
> <ul><li>foo<li>bar</ul> to <ul><li>bar<li>foo</ul>), I would rather say that
> the UL element corresponds to a sequence (ordered list). A sequence does not
> stop being a sequence just because it has no explicitly shown sequence
> numbers.
>
>> The set is an abstract concept, and can be dealt with mathematically, in
>> many cases without worrying about how many (if any) elements it contains.
>
> So is the sequence. It's just a design decision in HTML to disallow an empty
> UL element (or, to put it positively, to require that it contain at least one
> LI element.
>
> In a more logical design, empty lists might be allowed as a placeholder for a
> list, or as a construct that will dynamically be transformed to a non-empty
> list by adding list items. But browsers (and other interested parties) would
> then have to be prepared to handling empty lists meaningfully.
I agree 100% with your rationale, and 0% with the conculsion! MathML might
well allow empty [set] definitions if they are useful to maths, but the
idea of empty lists doesn't seem logical at all to language or document
mark-up.
--
DavΓ©mon
http://www.nightsoil.co.uk/
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