Headline: Styles pondering desertion to Content!

Hi Gang!  Its that time of the decade when Uncle Wingy has to whine 
about the markup of "graded school papers" again.  I'm hoping someone 
has come up with some new thinking and comments.

"Graded school papers" are just what you think they are.  A document 
full of original content, along with teacher-added circles, arrows, 
margin scribblings, cross-outs, angled text with transparent background, 
all those "dohickies" teachers use to make comments on a student's 
assignment.  As some of you may know, it has always been important to 
me... to try to fight for an easy way to mark-up graded papers like 
these.  I believe it is an important part of learning, and maybe even 
more so as we move towards paperless schools.

It has been my weak hypothesis that these "dohickies" or "mobs?" 
(moveable object blocks?) are actually CONTENT, not presentational.  So, 
I've rallied for things like making BORDERS be an OBJECT tag critter, 
and maybe using OBJECT as a vehicle for ALL these "mobs" that will be 
needed to markup a graded paper.  We've always had trouble with border 
widths affecting the intersection of margin and padding.  Making border 
a "floater" (a center-transparent, background-colored, div-block) would 
alleviate that problem forever.  Then, border (the object tag version) 
becomes the first step in using the object tag to make ALL my needed 
mobs... and life goes-on wonderfully.  That gruesome new 8-URL 
border-of-pics in CSS3 looks a bunch more manageable when each of those 
URLS is in a PARAM tag, too.  All we have to do is label line-throughs, 
borders, underlines, and anything that "adds pixels other than 
fontstuff"... as CONTENT things, and life changes immensely... possibly 
for the better.

So, now, does one approach this in a "new xhtml module" perspective?  Or 
maybe ponder "special objects library" for the OBJECT tag?  Any thoughts 
on these subjects is MOST welcome, and spec-writer consideration for 
this dilemma is highly appreciated!  There's surely a "right way" of 
approaching it.  It someone knows it, I'd sure appreciate a layman-grade 
explaination.

Thanks

Wingnut
Mad Scientist and Male Nun
Minneapolis

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2004 13:44:00 UTC