- From: Philip TAYLOR [PC335/O-XP] <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 19:18:51 +0100
- To: samuli@samulilintula.net
- CC: www-html@w3.org
Samuli Lintula wrote: > > I would like to propose including <i> and <b> in the XHTML2. Even if they are mostly > presentational, their *presentation* holds information. > > In biology, systematic names for species are written in italics: > <i>S. cerevisiae</i> in a middle of sentence might not be understood as a species if it > wasn't for the <i> tags. <span class="bug-name"> does not bear the same information. With respect, I could not disagree more : the /viewer/ of the page will not see "<span class="bug-name">S. cerevisiae</span>" (or even <span class="Linnaean-binomial">S. cerevisiae</span>) but will rather see S. cerevisiae rendered in italics PROVIDED THAT the associated style-sheet renders objects of class "Linnaean-binomial" (or "bug-name") in italics. The blind or partially-sighted reader, OTOH, will be /told/ that "S. cerevisiae" is a Linnaean binomial, rather than having to guess for him- or herself based solely on its default rendering in italics... What I would /like/ to be able to do, as you may infer from my immediately preceding posting, is tag it as <Linnaean-binomial>S. cerevisiae</> where <Linnaean-binomial> will (be defined to) expand to <em class="Linnaean-binomial"> in the browser, but it would seem that that is not possible, as far as I can tell. Philip Taylor, RHBNC
Received on Monday, 12 August 2002 14:18:54 UTC