Re: Cleaning House

At 12:05 AM 5/7/2007 +0100, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
>Murray Maloney wrote:
>
>>Can we all agree, based on these references, that it is completely within 
>>reason to say:
>>- The reason that we markup text is to distinguish or emphasize it in 
>>some way.
>
>Yes on "distinguish". No on "emphasize" (as the term is commonly defined). 
>Sometimes markup is used to distinguish text as /emphasized/, but 
>sometimes it is distinguished for other reasons.

Alright. So you will agree that marked-up phrases in HTML are distinguished
and that only some of them are /emphasized/.

>>- We often, but not always, employ visual and aural cues to signal those 
>>distinctions.
>>- There exists a rich history of typographical practice employed to 
>>signal distinctions.
>>- There exists a rich history of vocal practice employed to signal 
>>distinctions.

>>- Bold and Italic are forms of emphasis.
>
>Not generally no. Even if Wikipedia is accurately reflecting the actual 
>usage of the term among typographers, I think ordinary dictionary 
>definitions are more cogent when trying to agree how an ordinary author or 
>developer would understand the HTML specifications.

Sorry. I need help here. We looked at definitions of "emphasis".

How can you fail to accept that bold and italic fonts,
shouts and whispers, and lights blinking and sirens wailing are all legitimate
forms of emphasis?

>>- It is widely understood by practitioners that systems may render bold 
>>and italic using other typographic devices if bold and italic are 
>>unavailable (or undesirable for whatever reason.
>
>Who are "practitioners"? I doubt the majority of HTML content authors 
>realize this.

Dan and Chris and , do you think that everybody does or should know
that <b> and <i> can be presented using any CSS styling available to other 
inlines?

Hakon? Maciej? Dave? Please feel free to chime in anytime.

If it boosts my creds any: I was product manager for SoftQuad's HoTMetaL in 
1995.
I am qualified to say that you can redefine <b> to red and <i> to green
and aural and Braille readers can ignore or re-map them too.


>>If you really think that you get more semantic value out of <em> than
> > <i>, and you don't understand that you can use CLASS to enhance the 
> semantic
>>value of any element, then the markup world is in real trouble.
>
>Rather more important than my views is a web standards movement that 
>widely believes you can "get more semantic value out of <em> than <i>" (at 
>least, if you discount widespread bad authoring practices).

Such beliefs are tantamount to religion and magic.


>I'm happy to note Dan is participating in public-html although not 
>recently in www-html, e.g.:

Ya, he just doesn't seem to be following this discussion. I think that it 
would help.

Dan Connolly?

Received on Monday, 7 May 2007 01:13:20 UTC