- From: Martin J. Dürst <mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch>
- Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 10:05:09 +0200 (MET DST)
- To: Rob <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com>
- cc: www-html@w3.org
On Wed, 24 Sep 1997, Rob wrote: > Perhaps one should use the BDO element to signal a change in language, > even though the direction may remain the same. The agent will > automatically apply default rules of style for that language if nothing > is given in a style sheet, so that an English text with non-English > words (but in a Roman script) would render them in Italic, but a > Japanese text with English words would apply different rules. Please not BDO! What you want, namely just say that it's in another language, should be done by SPAN. With an attribute LANG="la" and an attribute-based selector as is worked on for CSS, you can then say: Put everything in Latin in Italics. BDO is BiDirectional overwrite. I very strongly urge everybody who doesn't really understand Bidirectionality to abstain from using it. Please never use it just because you didn't find anything else! > Or if no elements are added, a 'recommended usage guide' in the draft on > how to deal with some of the above cases.... otherwise most authors will > ignore the standard and continue to use the I element, deprecated or > not... I still hold that in the limited context of HTML, EM is a good way to mark up all kinds of emphasis and related stuff. Putting taxons, foreign words, and so on in Italics is because the writer wants (or by convention has to) tell the reader: Watch out, this is something special. In quite some cases, foreign words and terms are Italicised only the first time they appear. The difference to other kinds of emphasis is really not that big. Regards, Martin.
Received on Thursday, 25 September 1997 04:05:03 UTC