Re: Cleaning House

On 4 May 2007, at 16:35, Tina Holmboe wrote:

>
> On  4 May, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>
>> Focusing on authors wanting to convey things is a common fallacy in
>> semantic markup advocacy.
>
>   Correct - but it isn't a fallacy. The entire point behind generic
>   coding and semantic markup is /communication/ - which is why  
> suddenly
>   changing the agreed-upon interpretation of <I> is as useful as
>   changing the meaning of word in mid conversation.
>
>   Unless, of course, we are supposed to agree that semantic markup has
>   no value in the real world because a number of browser- and
>   editor-authors haven't got a clue and never did.
>
>   Very well. The fact remain: despite the good, and logical,  
> intentions
>   of specification authors, the browsers, editors, and authors have
>   broken the web.
>
>   <sarcasm>
>
>   So lets simplify things. Tables, frames, and font for layout has
>   proven itself to WORK - for various narrow-minded definition of  
> "work"
>   - and so we should not only keep them, but encourage them.
>
>   This piddling around the pond discussing which parts of "reality" to
>   support, and which to throw out because they "lack use cases", is
>   simply making things worse.
>
>   Either decide to make HTML a proper, semantic, markup language, or
>   stuff it to the gills with whatever presentational hacks authors,
>   browsers, and editors wish. Hell, bring back marquee. Why should  
> that
>   poor tag be singled out? The fact remain: authors WANT IT and UAs
>   support it.
>
>   </sarcasm>
>
Hear hear, and quite possibly without the sarcasm.