Re: Cleaning House

Boris Zbarsky wrote, quote
Just to reiterate, there are two questions here:

1) Should documents containing <b> and <i> be conforming HTML5 
documents?
2) Should the HTML5 specification normatively specify parsing of
    <b> and <i> that is compatible with existing content?
unquote

GJR's answer to question 1: absolutely NOT

GJR's answer to question 2:
why?  these presentational relics will be with us, always, in the 
name of backwards compatibility;  why not just map B to STRONG and 
I to EM?  why not leave the translation of B and I to an XSLT 
transformation?  the UA needen't support XSLT directly, but could 
use a proxy server to perform the conversion.

that's NOT breaking the web, it's FIXING it, using extant 
technologies developed by the W3C itself...

either you are for seperation of structure from presentation, or 
you are not; HTML5 should NOT include any of the following 
presentational elements:

  * B (bold)
  * BIG
  * HR
  * I (italics)
  * SMALL
  * SUB (subscript)
  * SUP (superscript)
  * TT
  * BLOCKQUOTE

the ONLY 3 salvageable and semantically meaningful of the above-
listed elements are: SUB, SUP and LS, which, as i proposed in a 
post archived at:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0099.html

would replace HR.

one could make a strong case that subscript and superscript have no 
semantic meaning, but i don't think of them as presentational items, 
but, rather, as meaningful holdovers from traditional typographic 
conventions, and which are intended to mark the contained text in a 
very specific and defineable manner.

gregory.

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He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for 
time is the great innovator.                 -- Sir Francis Bacon
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Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net AND unagi69@concentric.net
    Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
UBATS - United Blind Advocates of Talking Signs: http://ubats.org
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Received on Thursday, 3 May 2007 17:58:46 UTC