- From: Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com>
- Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 12:42:54 +0100
Also sprach Matthew Thomas:
> > When I read the arguments for <b> and <i>, I like to think of them as
> > backwards-compatible synonyms for <strong> and <em>, respectively.
> > Whether or not to keep <b> and <i> themselves is a choice of backwards
> > compatibility over better-named semantic elements, IMO. But one must
> > realize that they are just that--semantic elements (<strong> and <em>,
> > that is).
>
> That belief is widespread, but completely misinformed. <strong> and
> <em> have existed since the first HTML draft spec, right next to <b>
> and <i>.
Almost, but not quite. The initial design did not include b/i or
equivalents:
http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Tags.html
Tim Berners-Lee commented on this issue in an early message:
Comparing MIME's rich text and HTML, I see that we lack the
characetr formatting attributes BOLD and ITALIC but on the other
hand I feel that our treatment of logical heading levels and other
structures is much more powerful and has turned out to provide more
flexible formatting on different platforms than explicit
semi-references to font sizes. This is born out by all the systems
which use named styles in preference to explicit formatting, LaTeX
or other macros instead of TeX, etc etc.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992MayJun/0038.html
I quote this just to get history right, I'm not arguing any point.
> HTML has always been a mixture of semantic elements for common
> semantics, and presentational elements for everything else. That
> combination has allowed it to remain both semantic enough for device
> independence and aggregation, and simple enough for popular use.
Indeed.
-h&kon
H?kon Wium Lie CTO ??e??
howcome at opera.com http://people.opera.com/howcome
Received on Friday, 7 January 2005 03:42:54 UTC