Re: less than normal importance/emphasis

With regards to <insert> or <aside> I agree with Ian. It seems that we 
are trying to replace punctuation with markup which is dangerous, since 
a lot of people generally do not know how to use punctuation correctly 
and I would imagine that punctuation is used (or not used) in different 
ways in different languages around the world. I think it would be 
dangerous to assume that the way things are done in English are mirrored 
in other languages.

With regards to "lowering importance" via a <deemph> or similar tag. 
Anything that needs neutral emphasis should simply not be marked up. 
Cascading <deemphs> inside <em>s or other elements could lead to very 
confusing semantics.

I don't really understand where there would be a situation where you 
would want to use this. If something is to be de-emphasised in the 
middle of some normal text, then it is either not relevant to the 
content as a whole or should be placed in a footnote, sidenote or 
similar. I think this is a matter of how the content is generated and 
markup should not bend to make up rules for unrelated or poorly 
constructed content.

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Dec 2008, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>   
>> Today, we must do this:
>>
>> 	<p>You are so <em>mean</em> and, in fact,
>> 	   very <em>dumb</em>, also.</p>
>>
>> But with a <neutral> element, we could mark the phrase more naturally, 
>> like this:
>>
>> 	<p>You are so <em>mean <neutral>and, in fact,
>> 	   very</neutral> dumb</em>, also.</p>
>>     
>
> I definitely don't think the second of the above is more natural. The 
> former seems orders of magnitude simpler and better. Consider what it 
> would mean to change the sentence, e.g. by removing the stress on "mean".
>
>
>   
>> With regard to what Ian mention about what he had or hadn't  seen in
>> magazines: We have not seen <strong> or <em> in magazines, either.
>>     
>
> I have seen the equivalent of <strong> on cleaning liquid warning labels.
> I have seen the equivalent of <em> in many books.
>
>
>   
>> Nor have we seen <code> either, for that matter.
>>     
>
> The equivalent of <code> is seen all over the technology press.
>
>
>   
>> But we have, in certain Word processors seen the "normal" button. I have 
>> in fact missed such a button in HTML now and then. And we have seen 
>> bold, italic etc. (See below.)
>>     
>
> I don't understand why </em>...<em> is not good enough as a way to 
> neutralise emphasis.
>
>
>   
>> Good thoughts. Such an element could have been called <insert>, for 
>> insteance.
>>
>> 	<p>He, <insert>as he walked home that day</insert>,
>> 	fell in deep thoughts over the whole mark-up idea.</p>
>>     
>
> Why does this need markup at all? There's no typographical or aural effect 
> involved here as far as I can tell.
>
> We're not doing semantics for the sake of semantics, the point of 
> semantics is to be able to have appropriate media- an device- independent 
> styling and to be able to perform rudimentry machine-processing.
>
>

Received on Thursday, 18 December 2008 13:10:29 UTC