[html] "title" text semantics, and "minor" element discussion

Dear Working Group (and list members),


I sometimes wonder about two special HTML issues anyway:

* In general, why ain't it allowed to include markup within the "title"
element [1], what's the historical background? Aren't at least abbreviations
a perfect example for the usefulness of semantics here? And since I could
theoretically even show the "title" element ("title { display: block; }") on
the page, doesn't this even require the possibility to include other
elements as well?

* Also in general, why is there no way to designate rather "unimportant"
text? I can use "em" and "strong" for emphasis, but what about text that is
rather unimportant, because unrelated, for example? The "span" element does
not do this, so what about a kind of "minor" element? From an usability pov,
this is a "questionable" approach, and it surely (and hopefully) is a rare
case, but why hasn't this been addressed anyway?

Looking forward to clarification and discussion.


Regards,
 Jens.


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4.2


-- 
Jens Meiert
Information Architect

http://meiert.com/

Received on Monday, 17 October 2005 22:15:26 UTC