Re: Emphasizing STRIKE

On Feb 7, 2008 12:10 AM, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no> wrote:
> For instance, a typical example could be  that the holder of a document
> changed name or something, and that the old name was striked over.

Then the old name is actually <del>eted and the new name <ins>erted


> The semantic meaning is: this text has been striked over. How hard is that?
>
> You want to know if the stroke _also_ means that the text has been
> deleted. Well, I said above that that it doesn't. But - of course - it
> could also have that meaning. This requires analysis by the reader. If
> the document is a HTML version of a paper document, and the reader is
> aware of that, then he/she will know how to process that information.
>
> Actually, there is not difference between STRIKE and EM, STRONG, I or B
> in in this way: I am afraid you have to leave the understanding process
> to the reader. He/she must make sense of how the document is formatted.

>From Wikipedia [1]
"In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the
study of meaning, as borne on the syntactic levels of words, phrases,
sentences, and even larger units of discourse (referred to as texts).
As with any empirical science, semantics involves the interplay of
concrete data with theoretical concepts. Traditionally, semantics has
included the study of connotative sense and denotative reference,
truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse
analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax."

and most important [2]
"semantic HTML refers to an objective and a practice to create
documents with HTML that contain only the author's intended meaning,
without any reference to how this meaning is presented or conveyed."

Marking up the document in a semantic way ensures that it can only be
one possible interpretation of the text passage. Readers, UAs and
spiders must be able to give the same meaning to it. If you let the
document to be interpreted as the reader desires, then your markup is
flawed and must be corrected.

> The mark-up must mark up the text. The text is - virtually -
> «preexisting». You mark it up. If the text contains striked out text,
> then you mark it up with <strike>, so the readers know where striked out
> text begins and ends.

yet once again the stroked text represents an actual document
revision, prior to transcription to the web but a revision non the
less. The general use case is that stroked text won't be transcribed
into the HTML document as you are supposedly storing the most
up-to-date revision of the text.
If I move from an old house to a newer one, I will first empty the
trash can before moving it to the new house.


> The author/translator/mark-up person is obligued to understand the text.
> Texts are littered with e.g italisized and boldend phrasees. You as web
> author must judge _why_  it is emphasized that way. If you should use
> EM, STRONG, B, SPAN or whatever. In fact, often you will be _adding_
> meaning - the meanng you yourself get from the text - through that process.

HTML authors are not copywriters nor linguists, their job is not to
infer meaning on text that has no further explanation on its purpose.


>  The point is to present the document as a final
> product. (And paper documents are creates through a long proces:
> printing, siging, stamping ..) Not as something to which something was
> added, as if it still is a work in progress, or as if someone added
> things that doesn't belong there.

So you say <strike> makes the document any more "professional" than a
<del> element? Your use case is yet again flawed. Please be
consistent.


> Everything has a historical process behind.  So what? We write documents
> in order to present a final product. We translate documents, from
> language to language, or from paper to web, for the same purpose - the
> final product. DEL and INS are help elements on the path to the final
> product. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is uninteresting _noise_ if you
> deliver it to the final reader, though.

how can <strike> then not be noise? whatever gets hidden behind the
line is supposedly garbage that should have been left out prior to the
final revision of the document.


> The point is also to separate editing notes from the final text. The fact that
> you cannot - or are not allowed to - _date_ the time something was added,
> is a bad reason instead preferring SPAN with CSS over a semantic element
> such as STRIKE.
could you please elaborate on the meaning of the <strike> element
other than its visual representation? You are insisting on its
"semantic" purpose without yet explaining how it gives different
meaning than the <del> element, and please don't insist on final
documents as no final document contains unprofessional stroked text.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_HTML#Semantic_HTML

--
Gonzalo Rubio

Received on Thursday, 7 February 2008 05:46:43 UTC