Re: <note> may be a good idea..

 (relating to your P.S.) Unfortunately, I want my comments to be clear
in the context of what you are saying.  Many times, by snipping out
other parts of the conversation you loose some of the context and I
choose not to do that.  Besides I want to respond to all of the
conversation I received regarding this issue. To jump in between
statements can sometimes get confusing.
 
(Relating to the issue) As for your statements, I never said that they
are not to be rendered, I never stated that they are never to be known. 
What I am saying is that in the flow of a particular document, you may
reference something that is defined or mentioned later in a "footnote"or
an "endnote"  While it may not fit in the flow of the text, it is
information relating to this document or paragraph.
 
While not the only way to do this (you could do a separate web page for
example), it is a way to organize a document that has references to note
worthy things that may not be within the context of the particular
document or paragraph.  In thinking of formal papers, books, and
technical manuals this note tag would fit very well.  How it is styled
is a different story, but the actual markup is something is worth
looking into and thinking about.
 
If you disagree with it, that is fine. But in terms of structuring a
document, it does make sense and makes it very clear the intention of
the note.
 
Your example:
[ Thoughts that are outside the main context" are found in every
second
(if not in every) text, your message is not an exception. ]
 
Is incorrect in that the "(if not in every)" section still relates to
the main sentence so therefore, it is not proper example.  Now if you
want a better example, you could do something like this:
 
"The dynamic pressure exerted by the airflow across the surface is
directly comparable to the speed of a water jet hitting a wall at 45
miles per hour" 
 
The footnote here could relate to what exactly the cause of the dynamic
pressure was or the nature of it. So I could markup the sentence like
this:
 
"<p>The dynamic pressure<note>The dynamic pressure is built out of
several components which include the velocity of the object and the
cross winds associated with the initial motion before thrusting</note>
exerted by the airflow across the surface is directly comparable to the
speed of a water jet hitting a wall at 45 miles per hour</p>"
 
That is one of the ways I could see it used.  Is the note directly
related to the sentence it is in?  No... A user agent would render this
as a separate statement relating to Dynamic Pressure, not the main
sentence.  You could do a markup around dynamic pressure to link the
note with the text, but it is clear that the note has no direct
relationship to the sentence it is associated with and would break up
the "flow" of the document if it was inserted to the particular
paragraph.  Could you create a separate paragraph later?  You could but
the context of the note would not be associated with the content it was
tied to.  To make it work you would need to create an initial paragraph
to explain the dynamic pressure where in print or technical manuals, you
would just have a footnote describing or pointing to the resource you
got the note from.
 
That is why I feel it can be worthwhile (again I did not say it had to
be done, but it is something that should be looked at before tossing it
aside).  Are there other ways to do it? Sure, But this makes it more
clear the structural intent of the author. 
 
That is where I am coming from on this issue...
 
Richard Norman

>>> Alexander Savenkov <w3@hotbox.ru> 01/16/03 03:06PM >>>

Uh-huh. So you claim the blind users are not supposed to read those
notes. Is this the goal of the proposed element?

I guess you probably meant blind users should still have some
mechanism to access the note. Which is usually solved by a combination
of 'volume', 'speech-rate', and other ACSS properties. How does this
imply a need for a new element?

"Thoughts that are outside the main context" are found in every second
(if not in every) text, your message is not an exception. Marking
"think of non-visual user agent" with a <note> element is quite
irrelevant, isn't it? As it's been mentioned, there are other "thought
types" and comparing them all to the new elements is definitely not
the thing you would like to see.

In this connection a simple rule for taking new elements in could be
made: elements are for marking types (or blocks) of texts, not types
of thoughts.

P. S. Please do not cite the whole (!) e-mail when replying if you
prefer top posting.
P. P. S. I'm glad the 'style' attribute discussion is approaching
completion, thanks to Ian's summary.

---
  Alexander "Croll" Savenkov                  http://www.thecroll.com/

  w3@hotbox.ru                                     http://croll.da.ru/



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Received on Thursday, 16 January 2003 19:10:22 UTC