- From: Tina Holmboe <tina@greytower.net>
- Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 22:51:14 +0200 (CEST)
- To: Murray Maloney <murray@muzmo.com>
- cc: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, www-html@w3.org, public-html@w3.org
On 6 May, Murray Maloney wrote: >> Oh, there /are/ ways of doing it - but not in HTML. It isn't, and >> never was, that specific. But I'm not blaming people for using >> SPAN to mark up things that need specific styling. > > There are ways. You are clearly not familiar with HTML profiles or > Microformats. Can we attempt to focus on the topic, not the people? Thank you. > From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis > to accent the appearance, to underline, to put in bold, > make something more significant or important. > > Can you now see that italics are a form of emphasis? I do not subscribe to the consensus theory of truth, and I do not find Wikipedia a good reference - as I've said. This might be terribly politically incorrect of me, but in the above /Wikipedia is wrong/. Emphasis does /not/ have /anything/ to do with the typographical convention of underline, bold font, or italic font. >> Only that, as mentioned, the ship's name should not always be >> written as italics - and hence a 'neutral' element would be >> a better choice. > > A foreign phrase should not always be italic either. But most commonly > it is. That is why I would prefer <i> over <span>. But that's me. I am > just a technical writer with 30+ years of experience who happens to My compliments on your experience. It is indeed vast, and I am glad to see it demonstrated. > <* CLASS="ship"> means a "ship name" in my documents, which is > described in my profile and maps to an italic typeface via CSS. I > prefer to use <i CLASS="ship"> because it takes less typing and will > fall back in non-CSS browsers. Yes. In non-CSS, /graphical/, browsers with the capability of writing italics it will be rendered in italics. Like, for instance, the name of a cat? > Almost all HTML elements have limited semantics -- that is, the > semantics of documents and forms. We can never hope to create an HTML > element for every conceivable "semantic phrase" so it is time to get > over yourselves. No-one ever said we should create an HTML for every conceivable semantic value. That would be silly, counterproductive, and infinite. It's also a straw-man argument >> > > The original point, however, remain unchanged even if we >> > > move from the poorly chosen class name "ship" to the more >> > > precise "shipName". The I-ement convey no more semantics >> > > than does SPAN. > > Do you really think that you advanced this discussion by criticizing > my choice of the token "ship" rather than "shipName"? I might just as As much as you by insulting my intelligence. The point that I tried to make was that your chosen class name was ambiguous, it could be interpreted in several ways in English alone, and so was /not a good choice/ - juse as it would be a bad choice to assume that <i> or <b> has specific meaning when neither is unambiguously used on the 'web. >> Despite the flaw in the sentence after it, it seems they've >> got /something/ right. > > You keep saying that <em> is more meaningful, yet you have not been > able to explain what that additional meaning is. Pray tell, what more > does <em> tell me or anyone? It isn't a case of how much the EM-element tell you. It's a case of how LITTLE the I-element do. I have, repeatedly, stated that the I-element as defined does not convey any meaning, but the EM-element does. It is, in my opinion, the /wrong decision/ to redefine the world and not expect to take the consequences. -- - Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies tina@greytower.net http://www.greytower.net +46 708 557 905
Received on Sunday, 6 May 2007 20:51:21 UTC