Re: Revision efforts (was: The HTML Element)

Jens wrote on Monday, June 16, 2003 at 2:39:23 AM:

> Toby wrote:

>> <code /> and <kbd /> are not formatting elements. <code /> is used
>> to mark up a span of computer code. <kbd /> is used to mark up
>> computer input (for example: Press <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>A</kbd>.)

> Yes, but they are primary used to visually emphasize their content.

In a visual browser, yes. But most every element has some visual
effect in a visual browser, for the simple reason that a visual
browser is primarily or completely visual. The elements themselves
don't dictate a visual requirement and aren't visually specific (like
the b, i, and font elements).

>> CSS is a separate technology. There are browsers that don't support
>> CSS and I certain CSS agents that don't support XHTML.

> Right, and there is no (as it cannot be) user-agent supporting XHTML
> 2, either. All the development of a XHTML 2 standard is based on the
> future need of a interpreting user-agent, and this UA should --
> CMIIW -- support both XHTML as CSS for visualization.

Does XHTML2 require CSS? It doesn't matter if it does in practice or
theory. XHTML is a markup language and CSS is a style language.
Consolidating XHTML into a handful of elements and then styling them
with CSS means you have little or no semantic markup. If you want a
language like that, I think you'll need to write it yourself. The W3C
(more or less) clearly spells out their goals in XHTML2/CSS, and those
goals don't gel with yours.

XHTML and CSS are separate deliberately, not as a shortcoming.

-- 
John Lewis

Received on Monday, 16 June 2003 04:13:00 UTC