[Fwd: Re: italics]

I agree. Arguing that there should be a <sentence /> element makes 
little sense to me. Some seem to think that because we have <p /> to 
markup paragraphs that we should have the same for sentences. In my view 
we have a <p /> element not only to denote a paragraph but to make up 
for HTML's handling of excess white-space. Sentences are denoted by 
punctuation while paragraphs are generally denoted by white-space.

-Andy

Jens Meiert wrote:

>If you introduce a sentence element, I will cancel all Markup related
>activity ;)
>
>I don't feel the need to explain this, for me <sentence /> sounds really
>stupid (sorry, that's my opinion)... and <word /> comes next!?
>
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> Jens Meiert.
>
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>>Brock wrote on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 at 6:24:33 PM:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>seperation of meaning from presentation is the holy grail
>>>      
>>>
>>The existence of a sentence element, which has been discussed here
>>before, wouldn't affect the content in such a drastic way.
>>
>>Example without a sentence element:
>>
>>    <p>Alice had no more breath for talking, so the trotted on in
>>    silence, till they came in sight of a great crowd, in the middle
>>    of which the Lion and Unicorn were fighting. They were in such a
>>    cloud of dust, that at first Alice could not make out which was
>>    which: but she soon managed to distinguish the Unicorn by his
>>    horn.</p>
>>
>>Example with a sentence element:
>>
>>    <p><sentence>Alice had no more breath for talking, so the trotted
>>    on in silence, till they came in sight of a great crowd, in the
>>    middle of which the Lion and Unicorn were fighting.</sentence>
>>    <sentence>They were in such a cloud of dust, that at first Alice
>>    could not make out which was which: but she soon managed to
>>    distinguish the Unicorn by his horn.</sentence></p>
>>
>>For example, you could delete the space between sentences and replace
>>it with padding, but you would be incorrect to do so. Without a
>>particular style sheet, your content becomes:
>>
>>    Alice had no more breath for talking, so the trotted on in
>>    silence, till they came in sight of a great crowd, in the middle
>>    of which the Lion and Unicorn were fighting.They were in such a
>>    cloud of dust, that at first Alice could not make out which was
>>    which: but she soon managed to distinguish the Unicorn by his
>>    horn.
>>
>>Which is obviously incorrect. I think suggesting such a style as
>>default, for a theoretical sentence element, would be seriously
>>misguided. Yet it's probably less radical than your suggestion, which
>>makes even less sense.
>>
>>The purpose of XHTML isn't to replace content with markup, purely for
>>the sake of markup. The source is supposed to be human readable, for
>>one. Obviously some replacement happens, but not without reason. For
>>example, take the ol element. Something like this:
>>
>>    <ol>
>>    <li>Stir</li>
>>    <li>Beat</li>
>>    </ol>
>>
>>Will probably look like this:
>>
>>    1. Stir
>>    2. Beat
>>
>>But could look like this, without a loss of meaning:
>>
>>    A. Stir
>>    B. Beat
>>
>>If that would appear in plain text, the numbering system would need to
>>be embedded, something some consider a bad thing (e.g., with embedded
>>list markers you need to alter them by hand in order to change deeply
>>nested lists around). However, some people desire a marker element for
>>that very purpose (citing legal text as one example where it's
>>needed):
>>
>>    <ol>
>>    <li><m>1.</m> Stir</li>
>>    <li><m>2.</m> Beat</li>
>>    </ol>
>>
>>I don't have much of an opinion on that. Usually the marker isn't
>>important to me; although Etan Wexler made a good argument for it
>><http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2003Feb/0093.html> on
>>this list:
>>
>>    The typical argument for the 'value' attribute states that the
>>    list numbering is an essential part of the content and is not
>>    merely style. If we accept this argument, it follows that we want
>>    an element type dedicated to list item markers, bringing all the
>>    usual benefits (easy styling, ability to add metadata,
>>    internationalization, better degradation to plain text).
>>    
>>I don't know what to tell you, if you truly believe italic text is
>>essential to the meaning of your documents. Maybe you should give HTML
>>3.2 <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32.html> a whirl.
>>
>>-- 
>>John Lewis
>>
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Received on Thursday, 22 May 2003 04:41:18 UTC