Re: Add new tags to HTML

On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, Braden N. McDaniel wrote:

| > Add new tags in HTML seems to not interest a lot of people any more, but I
| > think there still is some things to do.
| 
| The canned answer to such suggestions is that you can create your own markup
| in XML.

The question is (it seems to be a very important point, but I haven't
found the answer anywhere) : can you create your own tags in XHTML
*without* refering to a DTD (well-formed XHTML...), and formatting them
with stylesheets ?

| The main reasons that no tags are likely to be added in the near future
| are... HTML as an SGML application has probably seen its end in the HTML 4.0
| specification. It seems unlikely that there will be much motivation to
| continue this line. It looks like the future of HTML is XHTML or some
| derivative thereof. The single task of XHTML 1.0 seems to be to express the
| functionality of HTML 4.0 in XML terms. Perhaps there will be subsequent
| versions of XHTML that extend the tagset.

Depending on the answer of my question above. If people *can't* create new
tags, then the existence of XHTML as the successor of HTML is very, very
important, and developping this language are also very important.

| > 1. Format titles of books, movies, etc.
| >
| 
| CITE is generally used for this, though I think this element is a little
| vague. Often, a citation consists of more than just a title. But
| historically, titles seem to be all it's really good at. There is also the
| problem that italics are not the convention for all kinds of cited
| titles--quotes are appropriate for some.

...and underline, etc. But you can add a 'class' attribute, which is made for
that. Thanks for your answer, I think the <cite> tag is what I want (the
spec is not very clear about it...)

| > 2. More important : express distance with the text
| >
| > Traditionally rendered by quotes. You express doubts about what you are
| > saying. The linguistical, french term is "distanciation" (I suppose it too
| > exists in english), and it is opposed with "accentuation" ("emphasize",
| > rendered by <em>).
| 
| This seems a reasonable suggestion. I like "dis".

But time is not to imagine new tags, right ?

Could <q> be semantically used in this case (or does it only concern
citations ?). [It's a problem of translation : does the 'quote' element
mean 'thing between quotes' or 'citation']

| The HTML 4 spec says:
| 
| "Visual user agents must ensure that the content of the Q element is
| rendered with delimiting quotation marks. Authors should not put quotation
| marks at the beginning and end of the content of a Q element."
| 
| This appears to be unambiguous--I'm not sure how it could be clarified. The
| unfortunate fact is that no HTML 4 browsers exist.

Yes, right. Right there is absolutely no solution to be sure the <q>
element will be rendered correctly, except Consortium members or other
create HTML 4.0-conformant browsers...

-- 
Nicolas Lesbats - nlesbats@etu.utc.fr
85 r. Carnot 60200 Compiegne - France
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Received on Tuesday, 1 June 1999 09:13:33 UTC