- From: Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis@googlemail.com>
- Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 12:09:11 +0100
- To: Philip & Le Khanh <Philip-and-LeKhanh@Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org>
- CC: www-html@w3.org, public-html@w3.org
Philip & Le Khanh wrote: > How an element "falls back in most graphical browsers" is completely > and utterly irrelevant to its semantics. If the semantics of HTML > were defined by how each element in it "falls back in most graphical > browsers", then HTML would be 100% presentational. Instead, the > semantics are defined by the specification, Yes and no. Even elements in a 100% presentational markup language would be used with discernible intent. There is a difference between the meaning (semantics) the specifications give to elements and what particular authors mean by using them. When these conflict, privileging one semantic over another will precipitate a communication failure. One of the guiding principles of the WHATWG efforts seems to have been to help user agents interpret HTML based on what authors usually mean, rather than what specs say they should have meant and what conforming authors actually did mean; the idea being to standardize interpretations in a way that keeps communication failure to a minimum. This approach is not without problems, but nor is it atypical of standardization processes generally. > and (in most cases) heuristically inferable from the name of the element (for > educated native speakers of English). Actually I think that's only true in a minority of cases: blockquote, table, i, b, u, font, img, form, button, title. Names like a, td, and pre are cryptic, names like address, caption, and map are deceptive, names like object, area, and script are vague, and names like acronym and cite are commonly misunderstood by even educated native speakers. > And when I asked > >>> Forgive my na\"\i vety, but which authority are >>> you citing when you make this statement ? > > and you responded > >> The authority of someone with 30+ years as a technical writer, >> 20+ years in SGML, HTML, XML and so on, and an original >> member of the earliest HTML Working Groups. > > I was actually seeking the /identity/ of the authority you > were citing, rather than his/her experience in the field. > As is invariably the case, it is necessary to understand > the semantics of a question before being able to give a > satisfactory answer. Just to clarify, the "someone" is Murray himself. But I think he's wrong about the intended meaning of <i>, since when movie titles, species, and foreign phrases are italicized that is meant to distinguish them from surrounding text but not to emphasize (stress) them. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Received on Sunday, 6 May 2007 11:18:02 UTC