RE: "Presentational" vs. "Legacy"

Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
> And relying on stylesheets (as in 'EM EM {...}' to replace STRONG) is
> not the way to go. Stylesheets are _optional_ and a correct and
> understandable presentation shall be possible without them.

I agree with your point that <b> and <i> are just as presentational
as <font>.

But it is still senseless to have two tags (<em> and <strong>) where
one tag (<em>) would be just fine.

I believe your point above is that it is *currently* a bad idea to
use nested <em>s to indicate stronger emphasis.  This is true, in the
absence of a W3C spec recommending the practice.  But I hope the W3C
publishes just such a spec.  Nested <em>s make more sense than having
two tags, <em> and <strong>, and no indication as to how they should
interact when nested inside one another.

Actually it is a touchy thing.  To fully specify <em> (and <strong>
if it is worth keeping) would require a measure of the intended
emotional impact, perhaps measured in joules or milli-therapist-hours.
This would require stylesheet authors to measure carefully the impact
of font sizes and typefaces to 

I think simplifying XHTML is important... and supporting old tags
is not as important.

-- 
Jason Orendorff

Received on Tuesday, 4 April 2000 01:48:37 UTC