Re: Underline element.

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> But if some people want [<u>] included, we should focus on finding reasons 
> why it should be included, rather than why it currently hasn't been 
> included.

I had noticed a new round of messages expressing dissatisfaction with the 
WHATWG/HTMLWG process. I thought this small issue about <u> would be a neat 
opportunity to be transparent and show how past decisions had been taken?


I searched the [WHATWG list] but didn't find much. Karl's link to the 
[Wikipedia] entry for "Underline" has some interesting purposes, as does 
[Simon's] recent e-mail.

Simon Pieters wrote:
>   * To indicate which part of the text would be link text in a sample 
> (I've seen  this in fora when discussing link text, for instance).

Me (Cerbera) using underline in the way Simon describes:

<http://www.accessifyforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=57570#57570>

Johan007 using <a href> point at the forum homepage for sample link text:

<http://www.accessifyforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=49010#49010>
<http://www.accessifyforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=49055#49055>

This technique means the page has lots of bogus hyperlinks. Underlined text 
would be preferable from a user's perspective.

The forum is using [phpBB]. Underlined text is marked up like this:

[[[
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">foo</span>
]]]

Which seems no better than this:

[[[
<u>foo</u>
]]]

The <span style> version uses 49 bytes of markup. <font style> would be 
identical. The <u> version would use 7 bytes; 85% less each time.

An alternative is <span class>. The smallest possible example of that:

[[[
<span class="u">foo</span>
]]]

This uses 23 bytes of markup. <font class> would be identical. The <u> 
version would use 70% less markup each time.

Simon Pieters wrote:
>   * To underline text when e.g. converting a printed copy to HTML and
>     underlining is a specific typographical convention.

Legal text citations are an example of this. Authors are already recommended 
to use <u> for this, for example:

<http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu/legalapa.htm>

Example of a WYSIWYG user applying underline to a hyperlink (search for "The 
UCL Practitioner"):

<http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/04/cases_citing_le.html>

Elsewhere, italic is applied to each side of the " v. " part using <em>:

<http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/casefinder/casefinder_1984-present.html>

Elsewhere, focus is given more to punctuation and abbreviation norms than to 
text styling:

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/full_toc.htm#3-000>

<cite><u> could give these "citation-ness" with underline. For example:

[[[
cite u {
 font-style: normal;
}

<cite><u>foo vs. bar</u></cite>
]]]

(20 bytes of markup. 33 bytes of CSS.)

As opposed to:

[[[
cite.law {
 font-style: normal;
 text-decoration: underline;
}

<cite class="law">foo vs. bar</cite>
]]]

(25 bytes of markup. 65 bytes of CSS.)

<cite><u> is 20% less markup each time and 49% less CSS one time than <cite 
class>.


An example of hightlighting parts of speech using underline:

<http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm#predicates>

This is a common practice amongst school teachers on blackboards and in 
students' work books.


Simon Pieters wrote:
>   * To indicate hotkeys of menu items, e.g. in a "help" document.

An example of someone doing this in 1997 (search for "choose Cascade"):

<http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/226/04/5.html>

A page where I did this in 2007 (search for "Save files"):

<http://projectcerbera.com/ui/windows/royale/>


This was just a quick whizz around the web which turned up some interesting 
uses of <u>. I could do a "Collections of Interesting Phrase Markup" survey, 
including how people currently do search highlighting. :-)


Simon Pieters wrote:
>   * To mark or highlight something (i.e. same as <m>). (IIRC, Henri 
> Sivonen
>     proposed to use <u> instead of <m>.)


* Henri Sivonen has proposed [<u> for <m>].
* Simon Pieters has proposed [<b> for <m>].
* Google already does <b> on its result page.
* <b> is a more common way to mark text in web pages than underline.
* Default styling for <u> may look like a hyperlink to users.
* They are all equal in terms of filesize, unless class is needed for 
different styling.
  * <u> would avoid <b class> to style search keywords differently from 
generic bold text.
* <m> is a [proposed] new element which "will likely be rewritten or removed 
from the spec".

<b> is narrowly favourable to <u> as a replacement for the proposed <m>, 
imho.

[WHATWG list] <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/>
[Wikipedia] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underline>
[Simon's] 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Dec/0293.html>
[<u> for <m>] 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Dec/0167.html>
[<b> for <m>] 
<http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005-July/004443.html>
[proposed] <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#the-m>
[phpBB] <http://www.phpbb.com/>

--
Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
Collections of Interesting Data Tables
<http://sitesurgeon.co.uk/tables/>

Received on Friday, 28 December 2007 19:42:25 UTC