Re: Underline element.

On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:24 AM, Peter Krantz wrote:

> On Jan 3, 2008 8:11 PM, Ca Phun Ung <caphun@yelotofu.com> wrote:
>
> I understand we cannot
> create elements for each and every semantic meaning under the Sun  
> but we
> could at least remove those elements that add no value to HTML, namely
> <b>, <i> and <u>.

In practice, deprecating <b> and <i> will lead to incorrect use of  
<strong> and <em> for content that is not emphasized or strongly  
emphasized. It's better for authors to use vague-semantic elements  
like <i> for ship names than incorrect strong-semantic elements like  
<em>. In particular, many in-page HTML WYSIWYG editing tools have an  
[I] button that inserts an <em> tag - this is just plain wrong and  
poisons any ability to infer semantics from <em>. <i> is a better  
default choice for a WYSIWYG editor in this case than either <em> or  
<span style="font-style: italic">.

>
>
> Absolutely correct. Elements for "each and every semantic meaning  
> under the sun" is catered for by the inclusion of RDFa in HTML5. If  
> you are working on documents where shipping terms are frequently  
> used we could see things like:
>
> <span property="shipping:shipName">Titanic</span>
>
> ...with the appropriate vocabulary identifier of course. This  
> provides custom vocabularies that will be distinguishable from  
> ambiguous things like <u> and <i> that aren't machine  
> interpretable. I really wish more people on the list could have a  
> look at the possibilities you get with RDFa. A lot of the time it  
> would shorten discussions like these.

Don't assume that all disinterest in RDFa is due to lack of  
knowledge. Some are quite aware of it and think encoding custom  
vocabularies and sending them over the wire is not a good idea, and  
that shared vocabularies defined by common convention, such as  
microformats, are a better choice.

Regards,
Maciej