Re: Cleaning House

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