On 22 Jul 2002, it is alleged that Brant Langer Gurganus sauntered in to
netscape.public.mozilla.documentation and loudly proclaimed:
> Brian Heinrich wrote:
>> On 20 Jul 2002, it is alleged that fantasai sauntered in to
>> netscape.public.mozilla.documentation and loudly proclaimed:
>>
>>> John Keiser wrote:
>>>
>>>> fantasai wrote:
>>>> > But using <b> to do so will not help anyone without a graphical
>>>> > browser. At least if you declare your intent--which is to highlight
>>>> > the information--someone can write the necessary style rules for
>>>> > devices with other capabilities.
>>>>
>>>> But that's the intent with b and i. Highlighting is presentational.
>>>> The fact that non-graphical browsers highlight things differently
>>>> just means they have a different presentation.
>>>
>>>
>>> By highlighting, I meant making text stand out. That's not the intent
>>> with <b> and <i>. <b> means use bold-face type, <i> means use an italic
>>> font. It does not mean "make this stand out". In the HTML spec, they
>>> are explicitly associated with changing font style, *not* for attaching
>>> semantics. Here's an example:
>>>
>>> <h1>The Hobbit</h1> <h1>The Hobbit</h1>
>>> <b>by J. R. R. Tolkien</b> <strong>by J. R. R.
>>> Tolkien</strong>
>>>
>>> In the first snippet, I have listed the title and the author of a
>>> document. The author line is bold. In the second, I have also listed
>>> the title and the author of the document, and in Mozilla, it is also
>>> bold. But that's just the presentation in Mozilla--in another browser,
>>> it could be rendered in italics or in a red font, or in a bigger font,
>>> or any number of other formats that make the text stand out. You see,
>>> in the second one, the author line is emphasized. If I were to read it
>>> aloud to you, I would stress the author line. (Perhaps it's quoting the
>>> title page to point out that the author is Tolkien, not C. S. Lewis.)
>>> I would not do that with the first snippet because it is not meant to
>>> be emphasized. At least, the author hasn't told me to emphasize
>>> it--only to make it bold, which as far as I can tell, is just a
>>> formatting convention to make it look pretty.
>>
>>
>> Not necessarily. Consider a standard bibliographical entry:
>>
>> Tolkein, J. R. R. <i>The Hobbit</i>. Place: Publisher, date.
>>
>> In this case, <i> would be correct, whereas <em> would be incorrect,
>> since book titles (as a few other things) are italicised. It's purely
>> presentational; no semantic or content-based meaning is implied.
> I agree here. There are times when presentational markup is necessary.
> But, also this entire bibliographical entry should be in <cite> tags
> which is usually rendered in italics anyway.
No, it shouldn't. <cite> is completely irrelevent here. I'm not citing
something; I'm giving a bibliographical entry. <cite> had its own problems
in this context as well.
> Actually, a markup
> language or at least the use of <span> should probably be used here
> since italics are the same as underlining in this case.
Um . . . since when? Underlining is a convention for hand-writing and
typewriters; italics is the print-oriented convention.
> Plus, there is
> rarely a difficult time seeing underlines, but there is difficulty
> seeing italics.
?! -- I'll agree that italics can at time look like crap on screen
(depending on font, &c), but I've yet to encounter a case where I've had
difficulty seeing them. (Let me add that I have an unreasonable adversion
to the unnecessary use of underlining, which tends to look like utter s***
on anything but a typewriter.)
> Perhaps it should be:
> <cite>Tolkien, J. R. R. <span class="title">The Hobbit</span>. Place:
> Publisher, date</cite>
Christ, *that* would be a mess.
If I'm quoting something in the body of my text, either as a quotation or
block-quote, I'm going to give a reference ('citation') in parenthetical
fomat. (My background's humanities, so I use MLA, but APA style isn't
dissimilar.) That citation (something like what follows) --
'Is not the attitude of the heroes of <i>MASH</i>, however, precisely that
of an active <i>disidentification</i>?' (Žižek, <i>Plague</i> 22).
-- refers to a bibliographical entry. (This raises its own set of problems,
of course, unless I were (as I would) to set |q { font-style: normal; }|.
There's also the issue of giving a link to the bibliographical entry itself,
since <q cite="<URL>"> wouldn't be entirely /� propos/ here, in as much as
it should be the /citation itself/ that points to the bibliographical entry,
not the entire quotation -- but that's easily enough worked around.)
I'm talking about the bibligraphical entry here. So, for instance, it
should be something like:
<p style="text-indent: -1em; margin-left: 1em;">Žižek, Slavoj.
<i>The Plague of Fantasies</i>. Wo Es War. Ed. Žižek.
Verso. London: New Left Books, 1997.</p>
> with a style sheet of:
> @media "print" {
> span.title { font-style: italic }
> }
>
> @media "screen" {
> span.title { text-decoration: underline }
> }
*Urkh!* 'Scuse me whilst I choke on that. . . .
/b.
>> /b.
>>
>>>> Non-graphical browsers most likely interpret b the same as strong,
>>>> and i the same as em.
>>>
>>>
>>> They shouldn't. If some do it's only because most authors are negligent
>>> and mapping <b> to <strong> and <i> to <em> is a good enough guess that
>>> they find it makes reading pages easier for their clients.
>>>
>>>> And b is a helluvalot easier to type than strong. Vilify me if you
>>>> want for not wanting to type 10 extra characters every time I want to
>>>
>>>
>>>> highlight a sentence ...
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm not going to vilify you for that. I completely understand that
>>> typing so many extra characters is a chore--I code by hand too, you
>>> know. If you're using a text editor with search & replace, though, is
>>> it too much to ask you to run a replacement on <b> and <i>? As the
>>> author, you will know when <b> really means <strong> and when it's just
>>> there for formatting.
>>>
>>> ~fantasai
>>>
>>>
>>> __________________________________________________
>>> Do You Yahoo!?
>>
>>
>> (No, I don't, actually. . . .)
>>
>>> Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better
>>> http://health.yahoo.com
>>
>>
>
>
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