Re: ISSUE-144 (conforming-u): Chairs Solicit Proposals

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 Thursday, 27 January 2011 00:33:18 UTC