- From: Ben Boyle <benjamins.boyle@gmail.com>
- Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 22:08:25 +1000
- To: "Peter Krantz" <peter.krantz@gmail.com>
- Cc: HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>
On Jan 5, 2008 1:24 AM, Peter Krantz <peter.krantz@gmail.com> wrote: > > <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. I'm not so sure it will shorten discussions ;) I prefer to use an element with *some* meaning as an alternative to span, if possible. I like the detail of additional vocabs that RDFa can offer, and I see strength in combining these practices. In the example above, I would choose: <i property="shipping:shipName">Titanic</i> (possibly cite may be better in this case). Italics does not and will never convey the rich semantics of RDFa. But it provides a meaning... a correct meaning in this case as italics is appropriate (in English, a valid point re translations but equally valid point that markup, not only content, requires translation). I try to use markup that provides the best (semantic) match. Think of it as a fallback for UAs that do not support RDFa. Or think of RDFa as progressive enhancement for markup that is loose and ambiguous in meaning. Now I would still use em for emphasis and cite for citations (for semantic clarity), but for other typically* italicised text I would prefer to use i (with class or RDFa attribtues) rather than span. Span does not mean italics, it means nothing. You may prefer to use span because of that very reason, and I can respect that point of view. I prefer to do my markup a little differently perhaps, and I sincerely hope HTML5 preserves this choice. * by "typically italicised" I mean as defined by a style manual. If I just wanted italics for decorative reasons I would not introduce an i element - css will do the job. cheers Ben
Received on Saturday, 5 January 2008 12:08:31 UTC