Re: Structure vs Semantics

> [Original Message]
> From: Chris Moschini <cmoschini@myrealbox.com>
>
>
> Why does EM have to be inline and contain inline-only?
> What's wrong with it containing a DIV, even if it's empty?
>
> With styles added, this could be perfectly relevant - the
> emphasized division receives some interesting
> background image or :content, whatever. It could certainly
> be something that is pizzazz-only and not useful to
> clients without styling.
>
> So why make the distinction in HTML?

Why make the distinction?

Well for one thing emphasis is only useful in MODERATION,
not when applied to large amounts of stuff.

IF YOU GIVE AUTHORS THE ABILITY TO EASILY EMPHASIZE
LARGE BLOCKS OF CONTENT, THEN THEY WILL DO SO, EVEN
WHEN IT IS CLEARLY NOT APPROPRIATE.  NOT ONLY THAT BUT
IN DOING SO THE CONCEPT OF EMPHASIS WILL TRULY BE LOST.

EMPHASIS SHOULD REMAIN AN INLINE ELEMENT IF NO
OTHER REASON THAN THAT.  THE SAME IS TRUE FOR MOST
OF THE OTHER ELEMENTS THAT ARE CURRENTLY PART
OF THE INLINE MODULE. THEIR USEFULNESS WILL BE
DILUTED IF EXPANDED TO NON-INLINE USES.

Another reason that the Inline/Block distinction should remain
part of the set of (X)HTML elements is that without it how
is a user agent supposed to tell in the absence of styling information
that an element that could be used for either block or inline is
supposed to be one or the other when the content of the element
could fit either model.  I don't like the idea of having an attribute
to do handle this.

Already, XHTML2 is becoming so divorced from existing
(X)HTML standards that I am beginning to think that we
might want to rename this to something other than XHTML 2.
If the block-inline distinction that has been central to (X)HTML
since at least HTML 2.0 is dropped, then change that might
to should for what remains will be, despite being a hypertext
markup language, so changed from the source that it will
have no right to call itself XHTML or to use the
application/xhtml+xml MIME type.  It may well be that to advance
it will be necessary to do so, but that shouldn't be done haphazardly.

Received on Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:13:38 UTC