semantic way of representing lines of a play in HTML

Question

Take the most famous group of lines of them all:

Hamlet: To be, or not to be: that is
the question: Whether 'tis nobler in
the mind to suffer The slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to
take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to
sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say
we end The heart-ache and the thousand
natural shocks That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation Devoutly to be
wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep:
perchance to dream: ay, there's the
rub; For in that sleep of death what
dreams may come

How would you mark that up in a semantic way, preserving space for a) line number (e.g., 1.1.1), b) character name, and c) of course, the text?

To be clear, the explicit line breaks you have in the text above must be maintained? — Phrogz, Jan 15 '11 at 05:18
Yes. Each line break above represents a separate line, although the same character is speaking. — Aaron Yodaiken, Jan 15 '11 at 05:20

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 15 '11 at 05:21

As the HTML 4 spec explicitly suggests using dl for dialogue, I think I'd use that.

Either:

<dl>
  <dt>Hamlet</dt>
  <dd id="line-1.1.1">To be, or not to be: that is</dd>
  <dd id="line-1.1.2">the question: Whether 'tis nobler in</dd>
  ...

...or, if contiguous prose is semantically important (it probably is):

<dl>
  <dt>Hamlet</dt>
  <dd>
    <span id="line-1.1.1">To be, or not to be: that is</span>
    <span id="line-1.1.2">the question: Whether 'tis nobler in</span>
    ...

The styling of this (leaving "space" for things) is separate from the semantic markup; however, the above gives you sufficient handles to likely achieve what you need, including possibly using generated CSS content.

I wasn't aware that periods `.` were considered [valid characters for the `id`](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/70579/what-are-valid-values-for-the-id-attribute-in-html) until today. — David Thomas, Jan 15 '11 at 16:28

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 15 '11 at 05:22

I'm going to have to disappoint you there, but it is not possible. See this A List Apart article for more information.

To summarise, because HTML is a markup language designed specifically to mark up a certain type of document, not all documents can be represented with HTML's limited set of elements:

Some documents cannot be published using HTML. In many cases, we shouldn’t even bother trying. In other cases, we have to radically change the appearance and structure of the document.

They even used a screenplay as an example of one such document. I will recommend you to read the entire article in full to see the rationale, as well other methods for marking up documents.

+1 for the link, and for conveying the limitations of html for the task at hand. — David Thomas, Jan 15 '11 at 16:29

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 15 '11 at 16:03

"HTML" and "semantic markup" in the same sentence seems a bit like a contradiction in terms. Unless, of course, you count labelling things as <span class="line-of-poetry">.

If you want to do this properly you need to think about overlap: in a play, dividing the text into lines of poetry gives different/overlapping boundaries as when you divide it according to who is speaking. there's a vast literature on how to handle overlapping markup - but I don't think any of it mentions HTML!

semantic way of representing lines of a play in HTML

3 Answers3