I don’t know if you’re like me, but sometimes I can’t help but feel that my good buddy XHTML is flawed. That is, take a look at the following example:

<p>
  <ol>
    <li></li>
  </ol>
<p>

Well, this is wrong structurally. Why, because both <p> and <ol> are block elements, which means they can’t be inside each other. But the truth is, this concept is fundamentally flawed because making a list part of a paragraph makes sense, both visually and structurally, in my opinion at least. The point is, my list may be talking about something located in the paragraph, rather than about another subject (as the start of a new block/paragraph usually implies). As well, this can be observed with blockquotes, which are often visually part of a paragraph but are structurally separated from it because they are block elements.

My take on this is certainly not to modify the way XHTML is made by removing the block vs inline concept. This concept is really awesome, don’t misunderstand me. Rather, the block elements should be able to reside inside other block elements, as this is structurally ok (see divs or lists being nestable). Even paragraphs could be nested inside other paragraphs, although this is a bit pushed, yet not so farfetched, here’s why.

In XHTML 2.0, block elements can now be placed in paragraphs. See, I wasn’t so wrong to think this was a great idea. However nestable everything becomes though, I don’t think they got it quite right in structural logic, yet. Paragraphs still can’t be nested in each other. Here’s the draft’s current take:

<section>
  <h>Heading</h>
  <section>
    <h>Sub-Heading 1</h>
    <p>Paragraph</p>
  </section>
  <section>
    <h>Sub-Heading 2</h>
    <p>Paragraph</p>
  </section>
</section>

So, rather than explaining everything that is wrong with this example, here is what I think it should look like:

<section>Heading
  <section>Sub-Heading 1
    <section>Paragraph</section>
  </section>
  <section>Sub-Heading 2
    <section>Paragraph</section>
  </section>
</section>

As you can see, my approach is more structural, reduces the amount of tags needed and arguably provides more flexibility than XHTML 2.0’s current draft. Everything is nestable in the same way current lists are nested, which makes a lot of sense. Giving the look to the text in an efficient way is then simply a matter of applying depth-based (hierachically talking) CSS properties.

Tell me what you think.

Turns out, Apple excuses itself for a “misunderstanding” and actually changed text on its web site. Mobile Me is not 100% push. Although updating an information on your iPhone will push it immediatly to the cloud and vice-versa, not so much can be said about a PC or a Mac.

Yup, Macs and PCs are confined to 15 minutes reccurent sync, in other words, not push at all. So, if you were thinking “great I’ll have exchange at home” like me, prepare to be deceived, as you can probably get a better experience with Gmail in the inherent case.

So if you’re not iPhone equipped, the only real reason you’d want to spend the extra bucks over simply upgrading your Google account for more storage with Picasa Web Albums would be that you like the Mobile Me and respective Mac OS X apps and use Safari or Firefox.

Personaly, I think that if you don’t have an iPhone, you’re much better off with the cheaper Google Gmail, Calendar, Picasa Web Albums, your contacts in Gmail and Windows Live Skydrive, or better, Live Mesh when it becomes available to the wide public for an iDisk replacement.

Well, as dumb as I am, as inocent as I can be and as knowledgeful of the case sensitive XML partisan I can be, I decided, uppon formating my Mac, that I would use the HFS+ files system, Case Sensitive version.

Turns out, it’s not even compatible with Adobe CS3. So, yes, I have to format once again.

For you web developers, this should explain one of the biggest misteries in web developement.
Or maybe someone taught you that once, or you weren’t as stupid as I am, removing all those seemingly uneccessary non-breaking spaces in my Government’s web site…

So, this:

<p>Blabla « W3C » etc. whatever</p>

On a narrow page gives this:

Blabla « W3C
» etc.
whatever

This:

<p>Blabla «&nbsp;W3C&nbsp;» etc. whatever</p>

On the same narrow page gives this:

Blabla
« W3C » etc.
whatever

Yes, &nbsp;, or non-breaking spaces, concatenate whatever you put with it in one word, making the word wrapping of a citation correct. (Yes, &nbsp; are not only used to make an empty table square appear in IE)

XD

Haha, been correcting some stuff people did while updating lists, here is it is:
English ­­­- Translated – Correct

• Export Development Canada – Développement Canada d’exportation – Exportation et développement Canada
• Canadian Race Relations Foundation – Base canadienne de relations inter-raciales – Fondation canadienne des relations raciales
• Farm Credit Canada – Crédit Canada de ferme – Financement agricole Canada
• Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission – La Commission dangereuse de revue d’information documentaire – Conseil de contrôle des renseignements relatifs aux matières dangereuses
• Royal Canadian Mint – Menthe royale de Canadien – Monnaie royale canadienne

Well, there’s a lot more, but I won’t do them all. There’s over 170 Canada Governmental Agencies that would be listed here if I did that, so, I think it’s pretty useless considering not all my blog’s public is Bilingual.

Btw, the corrections are actually just the official names I queried out of searches on the web, I didn’t actually do any translation myself, they are all existing governmental organizations in both language.

Oh, and sorry for the poor fellow who translated these in the word document I was given.

Alright, touch addiction was OK for a Mobile Phone, but I think pushing it to the computer is a bit unthought of. Did anybody think about ergonomy? Seriously:
- Break my neck by having the computer on my lap for hours
- Tire my arm out by having it hanged out to the computer screen in front of me
- Remove my chair by solving the two other problems by making me stand up (and make me tire from standing up)
- And god knows I hope they keep tactile keyboards

That’s all there is to say about that.

Jerry Pournelle says: “I can’t write a slow software for a Quad Core processor”

I say: “This is why I can’t run Vista on my older machines”

Needn’t to say more.