Re: Cleaning House

On 5/3/07 2:10 PM, "Patrick H. Lauke" <redux@splintered.co.uk> wrote:

> 
> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
>> T.V Raman, one of the few people in this group who uses an aural
>> presentation full-time, has said that he likes the <b> and <i> elements.
>> I'll let his explanation speak for itself:
>> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007JanMar/0668.html>.
> 
> "it matters little at
> the end of the day if the emphasized text  came through encoded
> as <em> or <i> once you have defined the same aural rule for both
> elements."
> 
> that's a "duh!" kind of comment, sorry. If I tell my user agent to treat
> both X and Y the same, it doesn't make a difference to me whether you've
> used X or Y. No kidding! This isn't even circular logic, this is just
> circular full stop.
> 
> "I dont believe visual web browsers have made this distinction
> anyway, in which case there is no real distinction."
> 
> Which doesn't mean there isn't a distinction. Sighted users of visual
> web browsers can, if they so wish, set their own styles to override the
> non-distinct presentation. New user agents can implement a visual
> differentiation. Tools can be built that can extract further meaning
> from the differentiation.
> 
> Saying that, because current visual implementations don't distinguish,
> it doesn't matter, is pretty much precluding any possible distinction in
> the future by just wrongly ratifying that there is no distinction.
> 
> Also worth noting that Raman's opinion/preference is just that - a
> single user's opinion and preference. It is worth taking that into
> consideration.
> 
> P


I like the latex example:

> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007JanMar/0668.html
> In markup languages like LaTeX the \em had a minor but key
> difference with \it --
> LaTeX was smart enough to render \em as something distinctive if
> it was used within content that was already italicized ---
> otherwise \em and \it were equivalent.
> 
> I dont believe visual web browsers have made this distinction
> anyway, in which case there is no real distinction.

That makes sense to me.

<i>Is visually easier to distinguish from the surrounding text but is not
always more important</i>

<em> Same for em </em>

<i><em>IS really really important</em></i>






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Received on Thursday, 3 May 2007 18:36:19 UTC