- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 14:57:57 +0000
Matthew Thomas wrote:
>
> Again, I know that <sup> and <sub> are (almost always) used to mean
> something, just like <b> and <i> are. But again, just as with <b> and
> <i>, *a computer can't tell what you mean*. When you use <sup> do you
> mean exponent, or footnote, or moment, or transpose of a matrix, or
> something else? Purely from the markup, a computer can't tell,
> because <sup> is presentational. When you use <sub> do you mean
> number of atoms in (that part of the structure of) the molecule, or
> variable instance, or logarithm base, or matrix index, or something
> else? Purely from the markup, a computer can't tell, because <sub> is
> presentational.
Of course the same is true with, say <li>. A computer can't tell whether
you mean a list of shopping, or a list or a list of links, or a list of
people who have offeneded you in the past month, or ... Purely from the
markup you can't tell yet few people claim that lists are presentational.
HTML by it's nature has weak semantics. That means that elements should
conatin some information ("this is a list not a set of paragraphs",
"these characters are superscripted and so not part of a word") that the
UA can use, as far as it is able, to provide an appropriate interface to
the document. It does not mean that every element has to have a
precidely defined meaning in the sense that you criticise <sup> and
<sub> for lacking. To do better you need highly domian-specific langauges.
Received on Thursday, 6 January 2005 06:57:57 UTC