- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 13:35:03 -0700
- To: John Foliot - WATS.ca <foliot@wats.ca>
- Cc: 'Lachlan Hunt' <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, www-html@w3.org, public-html@w3.org, tina@greytower.net, "'Patrick H.Lauke'" <redux@splintered.co.uk>, Philip-and-LeKhanh@Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org
On May 4, 2007, at 9:30 AM, John Foliot - WATS.ca wrote: > > One of the most exciting (to me) developments in the XHTML camp is the > emergence of the ROLE attribute - as it now provides a means of > "explaining" > what something is or does... To quote the W3C spec: > "The role attribute takes as its value one or more white-space > separated > QNames. The attribute describes the role(s) the current element > plays in the > context of the document. <snip> It could also be used as a > mechanism for > annotating portions of a document in a domain specific way (e.g., a > legal > term taxonomy)." > http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-role/#s_role_module_attributes The purpose of the "role" attribute is addressed in HTML5 by the "class" attribute, along with predefined classes. > > It's that last sentence that brings it home. We need to attach a > semantic > meaning to what are visual indicators (putting aside the <em> vs <i> > debate). Allowing (encouraging) the addition of a role attribute > to these > inline elements would thus allow authors to provide the desired > semantic > intent to the word or phrase that is being visually marked up: > > <i role="pleading semantic:emotion">Please</i> consider this... > <i role="forceful semantic:instruction">Please</i> be polite > in this > debate... > <i role="ship semantic:nomenclature">Please, Please, Please</i> was > docked at pier 17 in the marina... You could write these as: <em class="pleading">Please</em> consider this... <em class="forceful">Please</em> be polite in this debate... <i class="ship">USS Please, Please, Please</i> was docked at pier 17 in the marina... Using "class" and other extensible existing HTML constructs like "rel" is the idea behind Microformats. I don't understand how the "role" attribute does anything that "class" can't do. > In this scenario, it matters not whether it is <i> or <em> (as > Raman said, > it is effectively the same to his screen reading tech at this > point), but we > can now associate the reason why we've italicized (or emphasized) that > particular word or phrase. WYSIWYG editors could provide the > means, when > "clicking the B button" to provide a "meaning" wizard/dialogue box > - perhaps > pre-populated with some common reasons/meanings... Adding a way to annotate markup with semantics could be helpful for expert-level tools, but I think asking every time would likely be uncomfortable for non-expert users. Regards, Maciej
Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 20:35:12 UTC