- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 15:19:40 +0100
- To: Philip & Le Khanh <Philip-and-LeKhanh@Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org>
- Cc: public-html@w3.org
Philip & Le Khanh wrote: > I am still perfectly happy with 'class="_copyright"' to have > those fixed semantics, since the last time I tried to > use a leading underscore in a class name, something (perhaps > the CSS validator, perhaps Mozilla or IE) did not like it > and therefore I could not use it. It therefore seems > highly unlikely to me that many have trodden that particular > path before, so it seems a safe path to pave. That rather misses the point of "pave the cowpaths" though -- the idea is to preferentially spec things that have become common practice over things which have not. In this case the argument is that the practice of using class="copyright" to indicate part of a document containing copyright information is sufficiently widespread that it is beneficial to adopt that as a standard way of marking a part of the page which contains copyright information. The fact that authors may just have just assigning this class as a memorable script/style hook for that section rather than for "semantics" is strictly irrelevant. IMHO, to make the case for class="copyright" convincing, two things need to be demonstrated: a) that the signal/noise of adopting class="copyright" as-is is no worse than the signal/noise of a typical HTML element such as <address> and b) that there is some convincing reason to mark up copyright information i.e. a useful feature that a general purpose UA is likely to implement that requires this information. Some people have started looking at a) (imagine that! Doing rather than just talking! It should be encouraged ;)) but I'm not aware that anyone has made a case for b) yet. -- "Instructions to follow very carefully. Go to Tesco's. Go to the coffee aisle. Look at the instant coffee. Notice that Kenco now comes in refil packs. Admire the tray on the shelf. It's exquiste corrugated boxiness. The way how it didn't get crushed on its long journey from the factory. Now pick up a refil bag. Admire the antioxidant claim. Gaze in awe at the environmental claims written on the back of the refil bag. Start stroking it gently, its my packaging precious, all mine.... Be thankful that Amy has only given you the highlights of the reasons why that bag is so brilliant." -- ajs
Received on Monday, 7 May 2007 14:21:45 UTC