- From: Alan J. Flavell <flavell@a5.ph.gla.ac.uk>
- Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 13:42:29 +0000 (GMT)
- To: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- cc: Anne Pemberton <apembert@crosslink.net>, w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
On Thu, 23 Nov 2000, William Loughborough wrote: > At 04:42 PM 11/23/00 -0800, Anne Pemberton wrote: > >... When the author selects a text and marks it bold, he/she is talking > >directly to you the user, that this is more important than the other text ... > > The problem is a "cultural bias" that is so ingrained that it is very hard > to shake. But in HTML, when properly used, a marking of <b> could mean quite a number of things, but it could _not_ mean strong emphasis. Because strong emphasis is marked up with <strong>, and therefore when a reader/client would see <b> they are entitled to assume that it must mean something other than <strong>. They don't know what, but they are entitled to assume that strong emphasis is excluded. > What isn't clear to most who argue about this is that: THE BROWSER, IN > CHOOSING TO RENDER <EM> AS ITALICS IS USING ITS OWN DEFAULT STYLE SHEET. Right; and <i> could mean quite a number of different things, but what it could not mean is emphasis, nor cite, nor any of the other logical markups for which italics are a usual rendering. Because the recipient is entitled to expect an author to use the proper markups for those, and entitled to conclude that <i> therefore must mean something different than any of those. all the best
Received on Friday, 24 November 2000 08:42:34 UTC