Re: vague thought - grid tag

sb@stephenbrooks.org wrote:

> To clarify what I was trying to say, I wasn't really advocating the use of
> such a thing for trivial presentational layout like putting a menu to the
> side of a document rather than at the top, or various frame things.

  Well what do you think would happen with most tag-soup authors?  once 
they get hold of something even remotely presentational like <grid> 
would be, it'll be abused as much as possible.

> ...diagram-like or equation-like content... it looks like SVG could be 
> better for it, not HTML.

  That's right!  SVG is exactly what you should use, however, images 
with appropriate @alt text and maybe a @longdesc as is currently 
available and maybe providing some additional text based equivialent in 
a paragraph like the follwing will solve your problem:
<div>
  <!-- SVG in Here -->
  <img src="img" alt="image desc" style="height:20px;width:40px;" />
  <p class="summary">image summary...</p>
</div>


  MathML should be used for equations.  You could also include an image 
showing the equation, with appropriate @alt text describing in the best 
possible way using just text.
  eg.  <img src="sqrtx" alt="Square Root of X"/> before, after, or if 
possible, within the MathML markup.

> It's just that impatient people (like me) who can't wait for SVG 
> support sometimes abuse the HTML table tag since at present it gives 
> 2D layout without paying a price in backwards (below IE 7??) 
> compatibility.

  if you have structured your document well with XHTML, and used other 
appropriate markup such as SVG or MathML and provided substitutes, it 
shouldn't matter that a UA doesn't support the latest technologies.

  You need to learn to make do with whats available without resorting to 
abusing the system, which usually results in other problems.

CYA
...Lachy

Received on Friday, 5 December 2003 12:14:27 UTC