- From: Sander Tekelenburg <st@isoc.nl>
- Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 06:33:42 +0200
- To: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
At 02:31 -0400 UTC, on 2007-04-14, Mike Schinkel wrote: > Dylan Smith wrote: [...] > FYI, those are apples and oranges. <indent> as proposed would have a > default margin/padding/border/whatever whereas <div class="indent"> has > no such default. > > Why that matters is that those who have access to only the content but > not the CSS file (I'm assuming inline CSS is too complex and requires > too much repetition) can gain a presentational indent with <indent> but > not with <div class="indent">. > > People are, more and more, able to author snippets of HTML to be > incorporated into an existing HTML structure, and not just entire HTML > documents. We need to recognize that emergent use-case and their > applicable needs. I see your point, but I disagree with the proposed solution and pose that there may not even be a problem ;) It is *both* true that people in that situation can in fact achieve that presentation through <div style="padding-left:2em">[*], and that <indent> with a specced default presentation gives them no guarantee that there won't be some bit of CSS, out of their control, that says "indent {margin-left: 0}". The situation in which people can only insert snippets and not affect their presentation can exist for very good reasons: to ensure that they don't create a mess. And the other way around: when an environment is too limiting, the author (hopefully) has the freedom to use another environment instead. I don't see why or how the HTML spec would need to deal with these realities. [*] In fact, even <div style="padding-left:2em"> might simply be stripped down to <p> by the authoring environment. When you're not in control you're not in control. -- Sander Tekelenburg The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>
Received on Sunday, 15 April 2007 04:44:00 UTC