Re: Structure Again!

Actually, I don't think so. I think that if they see bold and italic elements
everywhere they are entitled to assume that the author meant to convey
something with them. The problem is that the author didn't make it very clear
what they wanted to convey. So it could be a citation reference, a
subheading, a definition, a foreign word, or any of the other things that a
couple of simple conventions are used for in print.

This is why markup like HTML provides something more than print, besides the
convenience of not having to manually turn pages when a cross-reference is
made.

In a given print document, there may be a couple of conventions. Then the
reader has to guess the rest from the actual text. In an HTML document there
are a number of ways to mark different kinds of information - saying not only
that they are important or different, but why or how.

Which is where we get to seperating the semantics from the presentation...

In order to make it clear that the information actually is, it needs to be
clear to the user that it is different. For example, a citation reference
might be italicised (or it might be a link). A definition might be in a
different font, colour, or both. In HTML, the recommended approach is to use
a stylesheet - a way of saying how to present each type of element.

There is a default stylesheet for HTML - a way that a browser makes things
look different if it just gets HTML. It is also possible to write a different
one for a particular page or site - for example to use a font and colour that
is associated with a particular brand.

But this may be no good for a user - for example I read many pages where the
authors have presented the font in a size I cannot read, or a colour I can't
read over the background. So I can create a different set of rules that suit
my needs.

As Anne said, with a decent tool this is just a matter of selecting a
particular type of element from a page, choosing how to format it, and then
telling the browser to use those settings.

Likewise, a good authoring tool will make it clear to the author how to do
this (Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines, checkpoints including 3.2, and
all those in guidelines 5 and 6, are relevant requirements here).

It is not true to say that the presentation is not important - without it,
people won't understand the different types of information. But it is helpful
to have a system where the presenetation can be changed to ensure that people
can tell it is different - this is what HTML and XML provide that print does
not, and why re-using what people have learned from producing print documents
is only a step towards learning to write web documents.

(On the other hand there are important lessons that were learned a long time
ago in print about how to use language, how to illustrate and layout content,
and so on, that seem to have to be learned all over again on the web. My dad
always told me tht the only thing we learn from history is that we are not
good at learning from history...)

cheers

Charles

On Fri, 24 Nov 2000, Alan J. Flavell wrote:

  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



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
September - November 2000:
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Friday, 24 November 2000 09:38:20 UTC