Re: <NOBR> - Returning to the question....

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 10:46:45PM +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> However, regarding HTML, the question arises whether <nobr> should be
> regarded as structural, at least when used for expressions like %7E,
> which may _change meaning_ when broken into % and 7E.

This should be handled by <code>, not by a <nobr>, which is purely
presentational. In semantical markup, the question you need to ask
yourself is always: *Why* do I not want this to be broken? Because it is
code!

Generally, WHY is the key to semantical markup...

> Or for expressions like -1.

If Unicode linebreaking rules are any good (I do not know them), the
problem is actually a different one: Nobody but professional typesetters
do know and respect the five or so different types of dash-like
characters, all fulfilling a different purpose, and all having a
different character code in Unicode (I guess).

However, once you actually start to consider the fact that -1 shouldn't
be broken, you'll probably also consider the fact that minus is
something different than a dash or a hyphen...

Anyways, I do not see any good solution for this. We probably can't
teach every web author to use Unicode correctly, but we can't ignore
Unicode either if we want to have any reasonable language handling...
Overriding Unicode rules won't do.

> if a document e.g. discusses the command "rm -r /usr/spool/foo",

<code> again.

-antrik-

Received on Tuesday, 30 March 2004 09:31:02 UTC