Re: Sentence MarkUp

Mike Batchelor wrote:
>Benjamin C. W. Sittler once wrote...
>>
>> What HTML tag should I use to mark "new" sentences? (That is, sentences
>> added to the document recently.) I want to mark these up so I can apply
>> special stylesheet attributes to them.

[omitted]

>What's wrong with
>
><p class=recent>
><p class=outdated>
><p class=unreliable>

It would be tag abuse to use subclassed paragraphs to mark special sentences,
primarily because he may not in fact want to put those sentences in another
paragraph, in terms of the document structure.

He could, however, use:

<em class=recent>
<em class=outdated>
<em class=unreliable>

which would be a perfectly valid use of subclasses of the EMPHASIS element.
As I pointed out in my previous posting however, there may be reasons other
than simple presentation why recently added or removed information should be
marked up with a specific tag. Namely, entities (programs or people) who want
to scan a document for a particular structural element (in this case, new or
outdated information) should be able to do so by looking for tags, not by
assuming a set of style classes. In this case, the <INS> and <DEL> tags are
reasonably applicable.

Actually, with that in mind, I'd like to put in a bid to have the ROLE
attribute restored to the <NOTE> element (whilst retaining the CLASS
attribute) for the reason that the role of a note is not simply a means of
determining its presentation, but rather gives information about how
important it is that the user see (or hear) and pay attention to the
information. It's structural, not just presentational.

The CLASS attribute could still be used for presentation control (such as,
put the icon on the right rather than the left, or make this note show up in
yellow text on a red background, or what have you).

Michael Johnson
Relay Technology, Inc.

Received on Wednesday, 26 July 1995 12:07:11 UTC