Re: Structure vs Semantics

Ernest Cline wrote:
> IF YOU GIVE AUTHORS THE ABILITY TO EASILY EMPHASIZE
> LARGE BLOCKS OF CONTENT, THEN THEY WILL DO SO

Hopefully they will use features of the language, yes... .


> EVEN WHEN IT IS CLEARLY NOT APPROPRIATE.

This is a red herring. Jukka has covered it.


> NOT ONLY THAT BUT
> IN DOING SO THE CONCEPT OF EMPHASIS WILL TRULY BE LOST.

Not so.


Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Emphasis is only meaningful in contrast with something else
> ("normal" content)

And there's no reason that a div or p tag are exempt from this possibility -
if you can have more than one of the tags on the page why couldn't you
emphasize one?


Ernest Cline wrote:
> 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.

This I believe is an antiquated argument. HTML2-4, and even XHTML1 exist in
accord with poor styling standards support - CSS was generally unavailable
while these markup languages were the latest, and so presentation had to be
given a nod. But XHTML2 will exist at least with XForms and CSS2.1 available,
which changes things a great deal. Why consider presentation of unstyled
markup? To me, XHTML2 is the other half of the CSS story that the W3C is
trying to tell - that your styling language is presentation, your markup is
structure and semantics, and never the twain shall meet.

So why include any notion of presentation in 2? If an author needs unstyled
content to look attractive, HTML4 is ready and waiting. If an author wants
XForms, CSS, and *ML to look great when combined, I think XHTML2 has found
its place.

-Chris "SoopahMan" Moschini
http://hiveminds.info/
http://soopahman.com/

Received on Wednesday, 10 December 2003 10:49:27 UTC