Re: <subline> becomes <subhead> and other updates

2013-06-17 13:48, Bruce Lawson wrote:
> If we want to  tighten up the definition of <small> and exclude its 
> use for subheadings, I suggest tightening up the wording:

The definition of <small> should reflect its actual use, its treatment 
in browsers and other software. This means following the HTML tradition: 
<small> means reduced font size. Anything else means complicated and 
vague definitions - and will hardly change the reality. People will keep 
using <small> if they feel they need it.

> How about making the definition "The small element represents legalese 
> (often colloquially called "small print") such as disclaimers, 
> caveats, legal restrictions, copyrights,  attribution, or for 
> satisfying licensing requirements."

That would be an arbitrary definition and would exclude most of the 
actual use that <small> has had, and has. If the definition were taken 
seriously, people (and browsers) could use the CSS rule
small { display: none }
in user/browser style sheets, since few people want to see legalese. Of 
course, this would not work, since <small> is mostly something else, and 
much of legalese is not <small>.

> And make the first note say "It is not appropriate for representing 
> sub-headers or sublines".
>
Would this imply "...even when the sub-header or subline is legalese"? :-)

 From the normative point of you, a note about something not being 
appropriate would not be a conformance requirement, I suppose. But it 
would still be a wrong message: using <small> is the only way of 
presenting a less important part of a heading in a manner that works 
across all browsers, down to the oldest browsers.

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Monday, 17 June 2013 11:20:07 UTC