- From: Mikko Rantalainen <mikko.rantalainen@peda.net>
- Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:26:35 +0300
I'm still wondering if HTML5 should define an element for less than normal importance or emphasis. Ian Hickson wrote: > On Wed, 11 May 2005, fantasai wrote: >> # Note: The small element does not "de-emphasise" or lower the >> # importance of text emphasised by the em element or marked as >> # important with the strong element. >> >> Does <small> de-emphasize the text at all? This paragraph implies >> that it does, except within <em> or <strong>, but it is not clear >> from the definition. > > I think it would be hard to argue that making text smaller isn't > de-emphasising the text. I mean, the whole point of hiding legalese in > small text is to make the reader not read it. So <small> means less important than normal (default) importance of plain text, if I've understood correctly when used outside <em> or <strong>. However, it does not lower the importance/emphasis of <em> or <strong>. I don't like this difference. Is there a difference in the semantics of these two examples: 1) <p><small><strong>License: GFDL</strong></small></p> and 2) <p><strong><small>License: GFDL</small></strong></p> ? Does the <small> element mean different things when it's a child of <strong> or <em> or any other element? > On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, Jonathan Worent wrote: >> If this cannot be done then I would suggest as an alternative: Add 2 new >> elements. One for indicating de-emphasis, One of indicating less >> importance. I leave the naming of them to you. > > Less importance can be done just by ending the <strong> element. Side > notes can be marked with <small>. I don't think there is a concept of > "less than normal stress emphasis" that really makes sense to mark up. If I have a sentence where the less important part is in the middle of the sentence but the whole sentence is important, I would want to mark up the whole sentence as a single element. I think that there's a difference between <p><strong>An important sentence <small>with less important part</small> continues...</strong></p> and <p><strong>An important sentence</strong> with less important part <strong> continues...</strong></p> Perhaps it's just me, but I think that the latter markup represents that there're two separate important parts in that paragraph. I think there should be exactly one important part and one less important part. > On Fri, 9 Feb 2007, Mikko Rantalainen wrote: >> I believe that <aside> and <small> are different from de-emphasis (that >> would be <dem> IMHO). However, the <dem> element wouldn't be that often >> used and it would be vital for it to be easily implemented. A new >> element with specified semantics and a simple default CSS style would be >> a nice choice. An example *implementation* could be a single CSS rule: >> >> dem { opacity: 0.8 } >> >> How hard it would be to implement the behavior David described above? >> Take any existing UA as a base. > > Would would this element mean? I assume you meant "what would this element mean?". <dem> would mean "less emphasized / lower importance than the surrounding content". I believe that the separation between less emphasized and lowered importance is not required so only one element is enough. >> And why do I think that <aside> and <small> are different from <dem>? >> Because I think <aside> (or a footnote) is something you can safely >> ignore and is usually orthogonal to the rest of the content. <small> is >> something you usually skip but you must be aware of the content (e.g. a >> copyright or license boilerplate) - the key here is that the content is >> often repeated but if you have read it *once*, then you may skip it >> later. The <dem> would be something that you may skip without reading it >> once but which is not orthogonal to the rest of the content and as such >> shouldn't be considered equal to <aside>. >> >> Example: >> <p>One should <em>never execute <code>rm -rf /</code> >> in a UNIX shell <dem>because doing so would remove >> everything in the system</dem></em>.</p> >> >> Here I think that the explanation is also something that should be >> emphasized. However, the reader can safely ignore the explanation. I >> think that <dem> shouldn't be considered to be equal strength to <em> >> but something less. Logically it could be -0.5 emphasis. > > Why not: > > <p>One should <strong>never execute <code>rm -rf /</code> in a UNIX > shell</strong> (because doing so would remove everything in the > system).</p> > > ...? That seems cleaner and just as clear. For plain text case I agree that using the parenthesis is enough. However, if the content is something else but just plain text (an <object> for example) an element is required to mark up the semantics. However, I agree that default rendering for such markup is hard to define. Any variation in text style can easily understood as positive emphasis and a generic rendering of lower than normal importance <object> is really hard to define. In the end, perhaps <small> should be used for de-emphasis of any content other than plain text. Parenthesis can then be used for de-emphasis of normal content. -- Mikko -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 254 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/attachments/20080415/57371fa2/attachment.pgp>
Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 01:26:35 UTC