Re: In support of the "line space" (nee <hr>)

Alexander Savenkov wrote:
> 
> I rather doubt it. They are not part of the story while the paragraphs
> they separate are. I would say you're confused by their presentation.
> In fact they're plain subsections, but unlike the first one ("Graff
> seemed...") the second ("He was...") has no heading. I. e. the author
> considered the second subsection too small to give it a heading.

This is not always the case. In less formal writing, such as novels
and newspaper articles, section breaks exist where the two sections
are not always clearly defined. Sometimes the text immediately below
a header refers to the header but gradually flows away from the
topic so that it no longer refers to the header--but there's no
exact point where you can say *here is where this section ends*.

> <section>
>  <h>Title of the book</h>
>  <section>
>   <h>Title of this subsection</h>
>   <p>...Some text here</p>
>   <p>Graff seemed unconcerned. But then, Graff always seemed
>   unconcerned. The next day everything changed. Graff went away, and
>   in his place they gave Ender a companion.</p>
>  </section>
>  <section>
>  <p>He was in the room when Ender awoke in the morning. He was an old man.</p>
> </section>

Most novels don't have subsections. If you meant "chapter", then
your structure is wrong because, IIRC, the last paragraph is part
of the same chapter as the other paragraphs.

> Using CSS2/3 selectors one can insert an image, a phrase, or anything
> else instead of just 'hr'. Once again, neither the line itself, nor
> line break can cary semantics. They tell nothing about the relationship
> between paragraphs/sections.

A line break, however, can be the default presentation for a semantic
element, and CSS can style empty elements as well as non-empty ones.
<break> would perhaps be a better name. A speech browser would render
it as a pause, a visual one as a horizontal rule or three asterisks
or an extra line break.

> adding a bunch of presentational attributes to it (as Lorenzo De
> Tomasi suggested) isn't very bright.

I certainly agree that adding presentational attributes is not a
good idea.

~fantasai

Received on Thursday, 22 August 2002 08:46:31 UTC