RE: Proposed new article: Using <b> and <i> tags

Hi Elika,

Thanks for these comments.  See below...

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/



> -----Original Message-----
> From: fantasai [mailto:fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net]
> Sent: 29 June 2010 20:42
> To: Richard Ishida
> Cc: public-i18n-core@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Proposed new article: Using <b> and <i> tags
> 
> On 06/25/2010 04:02 AM, Richard Ishida wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > I pulled this together this morning from an old blog post I wrote
> > and the HTML5 which resulted from that.
> >
> > http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-b-and-i-tags.en.php
> >
> > I believe (hope) it's non-controversial, so I'd like to propose
> > that we agree to send out for wide review at the next i18n telecon,
> > and publish about a week later.
> 
> That's a great article, however I would change the example of good
> usage to better match the spec:
> 
>    # <em>..</em> and <i class="doctitle">...</span> and
>    # <i class="foreignword">..</span>
> 
> should be
> 
>    | <em>..</em> and <cite>...</cite> and <i lang="fr">..</i>

Ah, thanks for drawing my attention to that. Changes made.

> 
> <i lang="..."> can be assumed to be a foreign word, and styled appropriately
> 
>    :lang(ja) > i[lang] { font-style: normal; }
>    :lang(ja) > i[lang]:before { content: "《"; }
>    :lang(ja) > i[lang]:after { content: "》"; }
> 

Actually you should think carefully before using this approach, since the language attribute only describes the language of the text, not the meaning. It is possible that you will want to style text in a different language differently according to the context in which it is used, either now or in the future.

It is usually safer to also use class attributes to describe the semantics, and not overload the language attribute

I added a new subsection to the article to address this.


> Also, I would drop this sentence:
> 
>    # Of course they could also have used span tags instead of the i or b.
> 
> since <i> is in fact more appropriate than <span> here: there is
> a definite intention of typographically setting apart the text in
> the element.

Well only more appropriate for people who use bolding and italicisation.  Not necessarily so for a Japanese author.  So it's not wrong to use span if you prefer, just different.  I added the sentence:
"The difference would be that there would be no fallback to italics or bold in the absence of style rules."

> 
> ~fantasai
>

Received on Thursday, 1 July 2010 14:27:24 UTC