- From: Ben Boyle <benjamins.boyle@gmail.com>
- Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 16:27:09 +1000
- To: "Lee Kowalkowski" <lee.kowalkowski@googlemail.com>
- Cc: HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>
On Feb 9, 2008 1:30 AM, Lee Kowalkowski <lee.kowalkowski@googlemail.com> wrote: > Surely any purely presentational element would be inaccessible in the > same way as visual styling. You won't be able to avoid including the > actual status as content (completed/closed/invalid/inactive). So how > does strike do nicely? An analogy. I'd like to tell you about an arrangement of atoms I've seen out our house a few times. It's sort of pocket sized and green. This is the equivalent of span+css, and I find it helpful not at all (except as a last resort). Unfortunately I don't know the exact name of the atom arrangement, and I don't want to confuse anyone by using the "presentational" label of "frog". Because that would be wrong and inaccessible. I mean, it could be any one of a number of species of frogs. Safer to refer to it as atoms really. Better in the long run for everyone. If you can't be specific, say nothing at all. I don't know if that example will help explain how I apply semantics. I see the elements of HTML laid out in a classification tree, with generic stuff (like span) grouping special purpose elements like cite, em and del. Presentational elements (b, i, strike - if we had it) are in between. I try to capture as much meaning as possible in the document itself, using the vocabulary HTML provides. And if a presentational element is the closest match, then I'm glad to use them. ps: yes I know presentational elements are prone to cultural/internationalisation risks. I use @lang where I can there, and as many others have said, RDFa can make this unambiguous regardless of which element is used. cheers Ben
Received on Saturday, 9 February 2008 06:27:18 UTC