Re: Cleaning House

Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:

 > HTML 4.01 does something rather odd in that it fails to define the
 > interpretation or rendering of <i> normatively at all:
 >
 > http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present/graphics.html#edef-I

I cannot derive that inference from the passage you cite at all.
It starts with the words "15.2.1 Font style elements: the TT,
I, B, BIG, SMALL, STRIKE, S, and U elements".  Thus it is
clearly stating that these elements  denote font style.
It then goes on to say

>> Rendering of font style elements depends on the user agent. The following is an informative description only.
>> 
>>     TT: Renders as teletype or monospaced text.
>>     I: Renders as italic text style.
>>     B: Renders as bold text style.
>>     BIG: Renders text in a "large" font.
>>     SMALL: Renders text in a "small" font.
>>     STRIKE and S: Deprecated. Render strike-through style text.
>>     U: Deprecated. Renders underlined text. 

 > So if it's false to say that <i> implies emphasis in standard HTML 4.01,
 > it's also not strictly true to say that <i> indicates italic.

<i> can't "indicate italic", since not all fonts have an italic variant;
it may well indicate slanted or oblique instead.  Yes, there is
no "normative" statement to this effect : but clearer guidance
from the informative prose would be hard to find.

Philip Taylor

Received on Sunday, 6 May 2007 13:42:30 UTC