52433 - the <DIR> and <MENU> tags are not implemented correctly

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core :: Layout, defect, P5)

Description

[yan.wong]

both the <MENU> and <DIR> tags (or their html3 equivalents, <UL PLAIN> and <UL
PLAIN WRAP=HORIZ>) give bulleted lists, rather than omitting the bullets as
should be the case. In addition, the <DIR> tag does not display multiple columns
as it should (this is not implemented in netscape 4.07 or iexplorer either).

Comment 1

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

MENU and DIR are deprecated. The HTML specs do not give normative statements
regarding layout. Thus we are not breaking any specs.

I would recommend WONTFIX, since there is no point in encouraging the use of
deprecated elements.

CSS3 may introduce rules regarding columns. qawanted: need a testcase.

Comment 2

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

FWIW, I agree that this should be 'wontfix'.

Comment 3

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Reassigning QA Contact for all open and unverified bugs previously under Lorca's
care to Gerardo as per phone conversation this morning.

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

OK.  The HTML 4.01 spec says these are deprecated and just points you to the
Transitional DTD for their definitions.  These definitions say nothing about
multiple columns and the spec does not give any statements as to how the
elements should be rendered.

The HTML 3.2 spec says:
"These elements have been part of HTML from the early days. They are intended
for unordered lists similar to UL elements. User agents are recommended to
render DIR elements as multicolumn directory lists, and MENU elements as single
column menu lists. In practice, Mosaic and most other user agents have ignored
this advice and instead render DIR and MENU in an identical way to UL elements"

So these are deprecated, and even when they were not no one rendered them right
anyway, so it's not like we're breaking backward compatibility or messing with
people's expectations.  In fact, in strict mode we should drop these because
they are deprecated and in quirks mode we should be compatible with previous
netscape versions.

In light of all this, marking wontfix.  Removing qawanted keyword.

Comment 5

[bsharma]

qa contact updated.

Comment 6

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

SPAM. HTML Element component deprecated, changing component to Layout. See bug
88132 for details.

Comment 7

[Moied]

Verified wontfix