- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 04:16:23 +0000 (UTC)
On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote: > > I have a copy of the Constitution of the United States on my web site. > That is a legal text. It also qualifies as "legalese," a derogatory > term. If I were to change it to HTML 5, the current spec encourages me > to place the entire Constitution in small elements. The spec says the following: # The small element represents small print or other side comments. # # Note: Small print is typically legalese describing disclaimers, caveats, # legal restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used # for attribution. I don't see how this can be said to encourage putting the constitution in <small> elements. The constitution is hardly "small print" or a side comment. > Encouraging use of small print for legalese also encourages this: > > <h1> > <a href="continue.html"> > Welcome to the BigCo web site. Click to continue. > </a> > </h1> > <small>By clicking above, you agree that BigCo can charge your > credit card $10 per visit to the BigCo web site per page clicked.</small> Right, that's the case we do want to encourage. It's better than the alternative, which would be: <style> .s { font-size: smaller; } </style> <h1> <a href="continue.html"> Welcome to the BigCo web site. Click to continue. </a> </h1> <span class=s>By clicking above, you agree that BigCo can charge your credit card $10 per visit to the BigCo web site per page clicked.</span> ...because if they use <small>, you can configure your client to go out of its way to highlight <small> text, whereas you have no way to know to highlight any text based on its font size or class. > Now that might not stand if challenged in a court, but it is definitely > not the kind of thing that the HTML 5 spec should condone. And yet, in > its current form, it does. What ought to constitute outright fraud is > encouraged by the HTML 5 spec in its current form. HTML5 doesn't encourage deceptive practices or fraud. > The HTML 5 spec also encourages, in its current form, placing any legal > disclaimer in a small element. Therefore, we could have this result. > > <h1>BigCo Services: We guarantee our work</h1> > <small>Except between the hours of 12:01 am and 11:59 pm.</small> > > That is a deceptive use of a disclaimer that the HTML 5 spec encourages. > This is most unfortunate. It is significantly better than the alternative, which is people hiding the disclaimer with <span> and styles (rather than <small> and styles). > There is no middle ground here. Encouraging legal text to be in a small > element except "when it is deceptive or inappropriate" would at best > lead to confusion. It seems worse to encourage it to be in a <p> element where it is indistinguishable from other small text and cannot be programmatically highlighted. On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote: > > My intention was to encourage the HTML 5 specification to not contain > any content that could be construed as legal advice. I really don't think the text in the spec can even remotely be construed as legal advice. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Tuesday, 30 June 2009 21:16:23 UTC