Psychology and usefulness

In article <173DA10049S86.FLAVELL@cernvm.cern.ch>,
Alan J Flavell <FLAVELL@cernvm.cern.ch> wrote:
>
>I'm going to admit that when I'm marking up pages in a hurry, I
>do tend to use <b> and <i> when I really mean em or strong.  But I
>don't extol that as a virtue - I know it's poor style.

You know, there's some very unfortunate human psychology happening
here.  When HTML was designed, why did they have to make <b> and
<i> so much SHORTER than <em> and <strong> ?  Everyone shrinks away
a little from typing six times as much everywhere they want emphasis...

And so people take the easiest way out.  (I declare myself guilty
on some occasions as well.)  But i do hope that these kinds of issues
will no longer be ignored.  Sure, we want a good content-based standard,
but it doesn't hurt to have one that people tend to use because it has
more apparent convenience.


Ping (Ka-Ping Yee):  2B Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada
kryee@csclub.uwaterloo.ca | 62A Churchill St, Waterloo N2L 2X2, 519 886-3947
CWSF 89, 90, 92; LIYSF 90, 91; Shad Valley 92; DOE 93; IMO 91, 93; ACMIPC 94
* Skuld  *  Amano Ai  *  Hiyama Hikaru  *  Tendou Akane  *  Ayukawa Madoka *
WWW maintainer for the Canadian Space Agency: <http://www.dsm.sp-agency.ca/>

Received on Monday, 17 July 1995 00:34:36 UTC