- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 12:51:43 +0000
Matthew Thomas wrote: > On 7 Jan, 2005, at 5:58 AM, Ian Hickson wrote: > >> ... >> For <sub>, the ideal aural rendering depends on the context, but humans >> are adept at interpreting things based on context and you could >> probably get away with rendering sub by simply prefixing its contents >> with the syllable "sub", as in "H sub-two O" for "H<sub>2</sub>O". >> ... >> the fact that you can use the element to sensibly change the aural >> rendering suggests to be that it is semantic enough to be kept in HTML. > > > Except that "sub" is merely (an abbreviation of) a description of the > typographical presentation! Because that happens to be a convenient umbrella for specific constructions in documents that need to be treated in a particular way by UAs. Indeed I would be more than happy if Web Apps "clarified" the situation with <sup> and <sub> so that purely presentational uses like L<sup>A</sup>T<sub>E</sub>X were forbidden as these uses undermine the ability to UAs to provide an appropriate rendering in the case where the presence of "superscripts" or "subscripts" in a sequence of charcters is important information that needs to be passed on to the user.
Received on Friday, 7 January 2005 04:51:43 UTC