Re: Structure Again!

> WL: They're not consciously deciding to be irresponsible, they're just
> unaware of these matters. They haven't worried their pretty little heads
> about anything beneath appearances. This is true of all of us to a large
> extent, but the means of learning more is upon us. Their "needs" are vague
> at best and to imply that structural tags (of whatever stripe) are
> "insufficient" is like saying there's just not enough colors available to
> express one's "mood". If the tags are insufficient, make new ones. The
> point is that structure is essential to sanity.

But surely if I had written something that I wanted to make available to as
many people as possible, I would want to add in as much presentation as I
can. Langauge doesn't mean anything, it's just there to be presented, like
art. When I want people to read my text I don't want them to understand it,
I just want them to see "well that bit of text is bold, and this bit is
italic, and this bit is both". It doesn't matter what the meaning of the
text is. In 20 years time or whatever when there are no formatting browsers
left, people will still see things like:-
"I <b>really</b> do <i>believe</i> that the current economic..."
And understand that "really" should have been in bold, and "believe" should
have been italic (even if they don't understand what <b> and <i> are: they
should look it up in a history book). Why should I instead write actual
logical and semantic systems that tell the reader *why* "really" should have
looked bold, or whatever. That's just a waste of my time, I'm sure you'll
agree...people should be able to automatically understand what my text
means, even if I haven't actually hard coded the meaning into it and
presented it later.

Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
http://xhtml.waptechinfo.com/swr/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/
"Perhaps, but let's not get bogged down in semantics."
   - Homer J. Simpson, BABF07.

Received on Monday, 27 November 2000 16:04:04 UTC