RE: Property suggestions

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Braden N. McDaniel
> Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 1998 11:18 PM
> To: Jelks Cabaniss; www-style@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Property suggestions
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org]On
> > Behalf Of Jelks Cabaniss
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 1998 9:37 PM
> > To: www-style@w3.org
> > Subject: RE: Property suggestions
> >
> >
> > > I agree the content belongs in the document and I agree that
> using style
> > > sheets for content is just as bad as using scripts for content.
> >
> > So you think that CSS2's generated content is bad?  As in:
> >
> > 	Q:before { content: open-quote; }
> > 	Q:after  { content: close-quote; }
>
> Depends. If the quotes are part of the content (as I think they would be
> most of the time), then this should not be used any more than a
> <PERIOD> tag
> should be used in place of one of these. I think that case would be the
> norm. I think the construct you describe is only appropriate for
> quotes that
> are there for decorative purposes.

This guy is dead wrong.<g>

Okay... I got to thinking more about this as I was going out to get some
beer. I thought something like, "No, if the markup language in use is
specified as generating the appropriate glyphs, then the author *should* be
able to rely on them." Sure enough, when I got back I found that the HTML 4
spec sez: "Visual user agents must ensure that the content of the Q element
is rendered with delimiting quotation marks. Authors should not put
quotation marks at the beginning and end of the content of a Q element."

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that there are no sharp distinctions
between content, structure, and style. We can make high-level distinctions,
but when it comes down to the fine grain, we see that they're interdependent
and intertwined. The structure is itself an aspect of content which we
usually infer from the language and style used. Style is just the visual
means we use to express structure when we don't think the language is
adequate by itself. Logical markup is there because we can't expect
computers to infer structure from the language the way we can.

And Q cannot "gracefully degrade."

Braden

<http://www.endoframe.com>

Received on Thursday, 22 October 1998 02:54:16 UTC