Re: code and blockcode

Christophe Strobbe wrote:

>> Who says that it must be a quote? Are you saying I can’t make 
>> original poems myself?
>
> I was only providing examples of cases where line numbering makes 
> sense outside the context of computing. For original poetry where 
> whitespace matters, you can use normal paragraphs with white-space:pre 
> or you can use the xml:space="preserve" attribute.

Well yes. By that reasoning, <em> is also not necessary, because I can 
use normal spans with font-style:italic.

xml:space="preserve" by itself will not achieve the desired effect, it 
only controls how whitespace ends up in the DOM. It is additionally 
already set to that value on all elements in XHTML 2.0. See also: 
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq#xmlspace

>> Anyways, I wouldn't want line numbering for poems, but I would want 
>> it for code. So that is a case where I want to distinguish code from 
>> other preformatted content, which is what I meant to illustrate.
>
> I have no issue with the blockcode element, but since we have CSS and 
> xml:space, I wonder why the XHTML WG wants to keep the pre element and 
> introduced the layout attribute [1].

xml:space does not do what you think it does.

>> As another example, consider ASCII art. It is definitely 
>> preformatted. It definitely isn't code, and definitely shouldn't have 
>> numbered lines.
>
> 1. No one ever said that poetry or ASCII art should have line numbers. 
> There are use cases where line numbering for poems and other literary 
> text are useful.
> 2. I haven't seen any ASCII art for ages. It seems like a relic of the 
> nineties; web developers now have much better technologies for visual 
> information at their disposal. Can you provide three examples of ASCII 
> art available on the Web today?

Oh, certainly. Your impression is totally off!

http://www.google.com/search?q=ASCII+art
1,550,000 results.

All those sites are extensively using <pre> for this purpose.

In Japan, ASCII art is also very popular, it is often used on bulletin 
boards. And you can also frequently see it in information files that are 
e.g. accompanying demo group releases (you know, the classic kind, with 
some visual effects, a scroller, etc). It is used by many on a frequent 
basis. And rightly so, because ASCII art is a great and fun concept, to 
express drawings with characters.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.

Received on Wednesday, 13 July 2005 11:24:40 UTC