- From: Kang-Hao (Kenny) Lu <kennyluck@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:45:48 +0900
- To: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Hi HTML WG, Sorry for bring up this old and non-technical issue. > This should be separated out into two separate proposals. I decided on one of the two suggestions I proposed, that is, make all <b>, <i> and <u> non-semantic.[1] That is, <b> = <i> = <u> = <span> semantically. I hope this won't be considered non-orthogonal to the raised issue as this affects <b> and <i> as well. The majority of people just sense certain inconsistency about the current status of <b>, <i> and <u>, and there are certainly lots of other similar proposals, but I might not be motivated to write up any of these: - Redefine <u> as a semantic element. - Reintroduce <u> as a presentational element or element with no semantics in HTML, potentially having the status "obsolete but conforming". Do nothing to <b> and <i>. - If <u> <b> <i> have the class attribute on, they are semantic. Otherwise, they are presentational or elements with no semantics. - bra, bra The editor claimed that <b> and <i> have solid and common use cases[2]. I think this might be a valid point as long as 1. The spec text "..., or some other prose whose typical typographic presentation is italicized."[3] is removed from the spec. I can't imagine how to translate this part of the spec into a language that doesn't use italic type often, say, Chinese or Japanese. Italic type is a non-trivial typography effect. 2. There are enough real world visual examples that actually style <b> and <i> differently. I would be curious to see how they are styled. Any pointer? Any comments? [1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/BIUArePresentational [2] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10838#c3 [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-i-element Cheers, Kenny
Received on Wednesday, 26 January 2011 19:45:20 UTC