Re: code and blockcode

On 7/11/05, Simon Siemens <Simon.Siemens@web.de> wrote:
> 
> Up to now blockcode is rather the same as pre. I don't see any advantage.
> 
> However, adding an attribute codelang, which has values like perl,
> xhtml, matlab, java, ..., would give it the intended meaning. This would
> enable
> 
>     Browsers to provide syntax highlighting
>     in addition to the preformated layout
> 
>     The upcoming search engines for programming code
>     to have a much easier life and do a better job

That and whitepacee rules could be set based on language. Some
languages are very particular about there whitespace. This seems to
make more sense to me. Though syntax highlighting and better searching
are long overdue.
 
>     Voice user agents to improve the given speech, e.g.
>         if ( a==b){ a=1;}
>     For now a german machine would probably say (translated)
>        i f brackets opened a equals equals b brackets closed ....
>     Knowing the language it could say
>        if a equals b then set a to one.

This would be incredibly hard to do with any kind of intelligence, but
even a small boost could be very beneficial.

> What would be needed is an (open) list of languages. As we could never
> list all possible languages, a naming guide should be supplied, so that
> it is very likely, that two people thinking of the same language use the
> same value. For the most popular languages a fixed list is provided.
> Maybe something like versioning should be incorporated as well (say
> "java-1.5" or "sql-2000", where the text in front of "-" is the code
> language and the text after "-" is the version).
>
> A second concern (less important) are the (propably often discussed)
> tags kbd, var, samp. We don't have anything like this in the Struktural
> Module (but we have code and blockcode). For me kdb, var and samp are
> some special kind of code. Obviously this is the case for say LaTeX, the
> perl-interpreter, MATLAB, ... Since code is a specially defined way to
> provide information almost every input and output is some kind of code.
> And I don't see any advantage for user agents of any kind that goes
> beyond the knowledge, that this text is some kind of code. So what about
> a substition by the code tag extended with a/the role-attribute?

Samp, kbd, var and samp really belong in a technical writing markup
module as they are rarely used outside this. But they do provide
important information.

-- 

Orion Adrian

Received on Monday, 11 July 2005 13:17:30 UTC