Re: "Presentational" vs. "Legacy"

From: JOrendorff@ixl.com
Date: Mon, Apr 3, 2000, 10:47 PM

> 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.

This seems reasonable.

> 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.

Another possibility would be to add a "STRENGTH" attribute to the "EM" tag,
taking integer values of -7...7, defaulting to 1.

So for doubly strong emphasis, you could simply use <em strength=2>

You could even _de_emphasize something with <em strength=-1>

> 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.

There may be applications that require absolute emphasis strength units, but a
symbolic range of 15 possible values should be more than enough for typical
usage.

Tantek

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Received on Tuesday, 4 April 2000 02:41:27 UTC