Re: AuthConfReq: Presentational Markup

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 5:17 AM, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote:
>  <b style="background:transparent;color:red">1984</b>
>  <strike>the</strike>
>
> The former conforms to the author conformance requirements present in the
> document.  How does this lead to greater accessibility than the alternative?
>  How does it reduce maintenance costs?  How does it reduce document sizes?

This is a relative rarity, a place where a very specific presentation
is desired in a specific place, with no semantic meaning behind it.
It was intended solely to mimic what the original Apple tshirt looked
like.  I don't think optimizing for that case is important.  As well,
in many cases like this more styling will be desired than what
presentational markup can present anyway, and so going with the @style
attribute the whole way through makes things a bit simpler.

Note, though, that accessibility is not affected in this case (since
it was a purely stylistic issue), maintenance costs are equal (I don't
think <font color=red><b></b></font> is any easier to maintain there),
and document size is roughly equivalent.  So, in this rare case, it's
roughly neutral with respect to the stated reasonings.  This is not
the case with the much more common uses of presentational elements.

> The latter does not conform to the author conformance requirements present
> in the document.  How is this less accessible than the alternative?  How
> does it increase maintenance costs?  How does it increase document sizes?

As stated by Karl Dubost, that could have been done equally well with
<del>, which *does* have better theoretical accessibility, is roughly
equal in maintenance, and is very slightly shorter in pure code
(though not enough to care about).

There may be, theoretically, a reason to keep <strike> even though it
appears to just be a presentational form of <del>.  We found reason to
keep <i> and <b>, after all.  If you can find one, great.  But if not,
then it's merely an irrelevant presentational copy of an existing
element.  We specify how to handle it in legacy documents, but don't
allow its use in new ones.

~TJ

Received on Saturday, 27 March 2010 15:52:43 UTC