Improved Phobos dox

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Monday, 16 September 2013 at 17:08:21 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 9/16/13 9:56 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> Right. I think I found the source of the misunderstanding: the 
>> idea is
>> not to depend on the default formatting of <dd> - the idea is 
>> to remove
>> the default styles using CSS, then use it like <div>, which is 
>> what the
>> old code did.
>
> I don't understand this paragraph.

You presented the example regarding replacing <i> with <div 
class="param">. We agree that this is a good change.

I understood that your argument against using <dd> is its 
*stylistic* (not semantic) properties: by default, a <dd> has 
additional CSS styles that are not present on <div> tags.

We agreed that tags that have only stylistic properties, such as 
<i>, should not be used. <i> has no semantic meaning (its 
recommended replacement is <em>, short for "emphasized", which 
has the same default stylistic properties, but now also has 
semantic meaning).

I understood that you applied the above arguments together, to 
conclude that <dd> should not be used for the same reasons that 
that <i> should not be used - <i> has the same semantic 
properties as <span>.

However, the difference between <dd> and <div class="d_decl_dd"> 
is that the former has semantics which the latter doesn't. (To 
clarify, by "semantics" I mean meaning that can be useful to 
user-agents reading the HTML, such as screen readers.)