Re: [whatwg] The m element [ and ]

[Øistein E . Andersen]

(I apologise in advance for prolonging this already quite long thread,
but I cannot remember to have seen the following points being made yet.)

The specification correctly points out that  and  elements may be
restyled and that the text they contain will thus not necessarily be rendered
in italics or bold, respectively. However, no example of why this might be 
wanted
is given.

A traditional typographical rule says that italics in italics should be printed 
in 
roman (i.e., non-italic type). An example of this would be a caption in italics
containing a foreign expression (based on an example in the specification):

> .caption {font-style: italic;}
> .caption i {font-style: normal;}
> There is a certain je ne sais quoi in the 
> air.

Interestingly,  is here used to mark up the part of the text that shall  n o 
t
be in italics. This could perhaps be used as an argument against the point of
view that  is merely presentational. More to the point, the obvious 
alternative
is clearly less elegant:

> There is a certain je ne sais quoi in the air.

(The spacing might give an idea of what is going on, but this is clearly too 
subtle.)

Règles typographiques* presents an interesting exception to the rule: Musical
notes (ut/do, ré, mi, &c.) are to be written in italics in roman and in roman 
within
italics,  b u t  they shall not be distinguished within the title of a work of 
art
requiring italics, which gives ‘une étude en fa dièse’, but ‘Toccata
et fugue en ré mineur’. (Marking up ‘ré’ in this case would of course be
possible, but hardly useful.)


In a dictionary from 1924, a similar rule has been applied for bold. Namely,
the headwords are printed in bold, and the stress is indicated using non-bold
vowels. (Almost anecdotically, the rule applied could be said to be that 
italics in
bold should be printed in roman, for stress is otherwise indicated using italic 
vowels
in roman [non-italic, non-bold].) An example entry could be marked up as 
follows:

> dt {font-weight: bold;}
> dt b {font-weight: normal;}
> 
> Typography
> the style, size and arrangement of the letters in a piece of printing
> 

 might not be the best choice in this particular case, but I think the point
remains when  is replaced by  (cf. previous parenthetical remark) or :
Logical emphasis is actually conveyed by  d e c r e a s i n g  the typographical
emphasis, a technique that is arguably more effective than overemphasis. 

Again, the obvious alternative Typography does not seem
quite right.


-- 
Øistein E. Andersen


*) Full title: Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l’Imprimerie 
nationale

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2007-02-10 à 6:13, Jorgen Horstink a écrit :

Concluding: to my mind a reference marker implies importance; we  
only highlight what is important for some use by some user. So, to  
blow the flame a little more, why not using a strong element with  
className 'highlight'?


That's not a bad idea, especially since the biggest use-case for   
seems to be for programatically-inserted highlighting of search  
terms, something that involves absolutely no manual typing and gets  
little benefit from a short element name.


   Big brother is watching.
or
   Big brother is watching.

And since the current specification has predefined class names, it  
could simply be added as one.



Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.michelf.com/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 12:13:38 +0100, Jorgen Horstink wrote:
> 

Anne suggested letting the microformat community think about it. That 
could be our suggestion to them if decide to go that route.
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 12:17:45 +0100, Jorgen Horstink wrote:
> To my mind a flag denotes a single point somewhere in the document 
> and does not denote a range. So I associate it with the real-world 
> analogy of a flag placed somewhere in the document. So I am not an 
> advocate of 

So does a mark in my mind (that may be me). Not that I have any other 
proposal.
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:16:57 +0530, Jens Brueckmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

>> To my mind a flag denotes a single point somewhere in the document
>> and does not denote a range. So I associate it with the real-world
>> analogy of a flag placed somewhere in the document. So I am not an
>> advocate of 
>
> I see what you mean.
> I am in the process of trying to grasp what highlighting acually is.
> For me it is something different from plain emphasis, although it does
> sort of emphasise a passage of text. So what do you think about
> something along the line of ATTN, meaning "attention"?

As far as I understand it, it means something very like emphasis. Expecting 
people to read the spec for things that have a clear and distinct meaning 
hasn't 
worked before, so why would we expect it to work now in the case of a fine 
semantic distinction?

I think there are lots of ways of splitting the hairs that define the 
difference, 
but I don't see that the element is worth adding. And I am a native english 
speaker trying to understand the differences. I can only guess at what those 
people I work with who speak dreadful english are going to make of it. I guess 
it could become the google element (if that is the example), or just an 
optional 
variant of em (in the same way that strong is often used now).

Cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Try Opera 9.1 http://opera.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Keryx Web]

Alexey Feldgendler wrote:
I don't like the idea of reusing an existing presentational element such 
as . Otherwise we'd immediately have the web full of incorrect uses 
of the element.


I agree strongly.

Rule number one: Do not confuse users. Therefore it is bad usability to 
underline anything that is not a link.


Rule number two: Do not confuse developers. If developer A starts 
building an app using  to mean anything else but "underlined text", 
then developer B comes along, sees all existing markup - gets confused - 
and it will take quite a while for her/him to get up to speed.


The only current element that can be used instead of  is , like 
in ,  or class="searchresult">


I think that is good enough. We do not need need the  element.


Lars Gunther

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jens Brueckmann]

My problem is; strong and em do draw attention as well don't they? I
mean normally they do by some sort of mechanism (visual or aural).


Sure they do, as do headings, and images.

But the purpose is different. Whereas headings, objects, emphasis etc.
are usually an integral and static part of a document, the
M/MARK/HI/FLAG/ATTN elements may change.


Secondly, attention which is caused by a visual, aural or shortcut
clue sounds like presentational markup to me.


Somehow these points of interest surely have to be presented, but they
are more than merely presentational.

--
Jens Brueckmann
http://www.yalf.de

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jorgen Horstink]

On Feb 10, 2007, at 12:46 PM, Jens Brueckmann wrote:


To my mind a flag denotes a single point somewhere in the document
and does not denote a range. So I associate it with the real-world
analogy of a flag placed somewhere in the document. So I am not an
advocate of 


I see what you mean.
I am in the process of trying to grasp what highlighting acually is.
For me it is something different from plain emphasis, although it does
sort of emphasise a passage of text. So what do you think about
something along the line of ATTN, meaning "attention"?


My problem is; strong and em do draw attention as well don't they? I  
mean normally they do by some sort of mechanism (visual or aural).  
Secondly, attention which is caused by a visual, aural or shortcut  
clue sounds like presentational markup to me.





--
Jens Brueckmann
http://www.yalf.de

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jens Brueckmann]

To my mind a flag denotes a single point somewhere in the document
and does not denote a range. So I associate it with the real-world
analogy of a flag placed somewhere in the document. So I am not an
advocate of 


I see what you mean.
I am in the process of trying to grasp what highlighting acually is.
For me it is something different from plain emphasis, although it does
sort of emphasise a passage of text. So what do you think about
something along the line of ATTN, meaning "attention"?


--
Jens Brueckmann
http://www.yalf.de

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jorgen Horstink]

On Feb 10, 2007, at 12:05 PM, Jens Brueckmann wrote:

a reference for the user, which is exactly what this element is  
for.  It
doesn't matter whether the user looks at it immediately, in 5  
minutes,
tomorrow, or in the distant future; it's there for when the user  
needs it.


It comes to my mind that an appropriate name for this element woud  
be  "flag".

Putting a flag somewhere in a document does not emphasise but draws
attention to this part (as in Google or when manually highlighting
some passages or words in document).


To my mind a flag denotes a single point somewhere in the document  
and does not denote a range. So I associate it with the real-world  
analogy of a flag placed somewhere in the document. So I am not an  
advocate of 




This name best describes its usage and avoids confusion with EM and  
STRONG.


Cheers,

jens
--
Jens Brueckmann
http://www.yalf.de

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jorgen Horstink]

On Feb 10, 2007, at 3:41 AM, Michel Fortin wrote:


Le 2007-02-09 à 16:36, Lachlan Hunt a écrit :

No, the use cases for  are clear, and it is different from both  
 and .  I think it should be kept as-is, though its  
definition in the spec clearly needs to be improved.


Suggestion of an improvement to the spec:

"The m element represents a run of text marked or highlighted for  
reference purposes."


I think adding "for reference purposes" to the current definition  
helps distinguish it from importance (given by ) or stress  
emphasis (given by ).


 : stress emphasis (changes the meaning)
 : importance (no change in meaning)
  : reference marker (no change in meaning or importance)


I've been reading the entire discussion now, and I am still not  
completely convinced of the need for the  element. In sum the  
element  is now explained as highlighting (or marking, I don't  
care about naming) for reference purposes.
Lachlan Hunt explained that 'future reference' can be within weeks  
(when you have to learn an exam for example), days, minutes or  
immediately (google cache). My main concern is; what are we  
referencing? To my mind it is important content. When we highlight  
articles, we only highlight the important pieces of content which are  
useful to us to generate a mental model of the material. When we  
highlight search keywords, we only highlight the important words  
within the context of the query.
Concluding: to my mind a reference marker implies importance; we only  
highlight what is important for some use by some user. So, to blow  
the flame a little more, why not using a strong element with  
className 'highlight'?





Jorgen Horstink




Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.michelf.com/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jens Brueckmann]

a reference for the user, which is exactly what this element is for.  It
doesn't matter whether the user looks at it immediately, in 5 minutes,
tomorrow, or in the distant future; it's there for when the user needs it.


It comes to my mind that an appropriate name for this element woud be  "flag".
Putting a flag somewhere in a document does not emphasise but draws
attention to this part (as in Google or when manually highlighting
some passages or words in document).

This name best describes its usage and avoids confusion with EM and STRONG.

Cheers,

jens
--
Jens Brueckmann
http://www.yalf.de

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jorgen Horstink]

On Feb 10, 2007, at 11:25 AM, Alexey Feldgendler wrote:

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:30:10 +0100, Anne van Kesteren  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


I'm not arguing against this. (Heck, I provided the idea for the  
second example.) I'm just saying it hasn't really been requested  
before and that I'm wondering whether it's common enough to  
warrant a new element. Perhaps  can be "reused" for this as  
Henri suggested or perhaps we shouldn't really specify this as an  
element yet and let the microformat community look into it more  
closely first.


I don't like the idea of reusing an existing presentational element  
such as . Otherwise we'd immediately have the web full of  
incorrect uses of the element.


I absolutely second that. Just because of backwards compatibility we  
should not reuse the element. I'm an advocate of Anne's suggestion to  
let the microformat community look into it more closely first.





--
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:30:10 +0100, Anne van Kesteren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:


I'm not arguing against this. (Heck, I provided the idea for the second  
example.) I'm just saying it hasn't really been requested before and  
that I'm wondering whether it's common enough to warrant a new element.  
Perhaps  can be "reused" for this as Henri suggested or perhaps we  
shouldn't really specify this as an element yet and let the microformat  
community look into it more closely first.


I don't like the idea of reusing an existing presentational element such  
as . Otherwise we'd immediately have the web full of incorrect uses of  
the element.



--
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2007-02-09 à 16:36, Lachlan Hunt a écrit :

No, the use cases for  are clear, and it is different from both  
 and .  I think it should be kept as-is, though its  
definition in the spec clearly needs to be improved.


Suggestion of an improvement to the spec:

"The m element represents a run of text marked or highlighted for  
reference purposes."


I think adding "for reference purposes" to the current definition  
helps distinguish it from importance (given by ) or stress  
emphasis (given by ).


 : stress emphasis (changes the meaning)
 : importance (no change in meaning)
  : reference marker (no change in meaning or importance)


Michel Fortin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.michelf.com/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 11:21:39 +1100, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> I think your putting too much 
> emphasis on the word "future".  The google cache highlights the word 
> as a reference for the user, which is exactly what this element is 
> for.  It doesn't matter whether the user looks at it immediately, in 
> 5 minutes, tomorrow, or in the distant future; it's there for when 
> the user needs it.

You answered my question, thank you

> 
> -- 
> Lachlan Hunt
> http://lachy.id.au/
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Lachlan Hunt]

David Latapie wrote:

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 08:36:25 +1100, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
 marks a point of interest for future reference, it does not 
denote importance.  Everyone seems to be focussing on the definition 
of highlight meaning emphasis as their argument that it is the same 
as  and/or .  However, it's the definition of mark [1], 
in particular "to identify an item for future reference", that is 
most relevant, and neither  nor  fulfil that purpose.


Of Google cache highlighting has anything to do with future reference? 
Or is the Google cache highlighting example a wrong one?


What?  I'm not sure I understand, but I think your putting too much 
emphasis on the word "future".  The google cache highlights the word as 
a reference for the user, which is exactly what this element is for.  It 
doesn't matter whether the user looks at it immediately, in 5 minutes, 
tomorrow, or in the distant future; it's there for when the user needs it.


--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 08:36:25 +1100, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>  marks a point of interest for future reference, it does not 
> denote importance.  Everyone seems to be focussing on the definition 
> of highlight meaning emphasis as their argument that it is the same 
> as  and/or .  However, it's the definition of mark [1], 
> in particular "to identify an item for future reference", that is 
> most relevant, and neither  nor  fulfil that purpose.

Of Google cache highlighting has anything to do with future reference? 
Or is the Google cache highlighting example a wrong one?
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:36:25 +0100, Lachlan Hunt  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
I think I agree that  should be dropped. I believe such an element  
has never been requested before on www-html or equivalent fora.


No, the use cases for  are clear, and it is different from both   
and .  I think it should be kept as-is, though its definition in  
the spec clearly needs to be improved.


I'm not arguing against this. (Heck, I provided the idea for the second  
example.) I'm just saying it hasn't really been requested before and that  
I'm wondering whether it's common enough to warrant a new element. Perhaps  
 can be "reused" for this as Henri suggested or perhaps we shouldn't  
really specify this as an element yet and let the microformat community  
look into it more closely first.



--
Anne van Kesteren

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Lachlan Hunt]

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
I think I agree that  should be dropped. I believe such an element 
has never been requested before on www-html or equivalent fora.


No, the use cases for  are clear, and it is different from both  
and .  I think it should be kept as-is, though its definition in 
the spec clearly needs to be improved.


David Latapie wrote:

"highlight" just means "draw attention to",


How does it differ from "important"?


 marks a point of interest for future reference, it does not denote 
importance.  Everyone seems to be focussing on the definition of 
highlight meaning emphasis as their argument that it is the same as  
and/or .  However, it's the definition of mark [1], in 
particular "to identify an item for future reference", that is most 
relevant, and neither  nor  fulfil that purpose.


Highlighting, emphasising, underlining, or whatever, is simply the 
mechanism used to identify the item, not the semantic purpose of the 
element itself.


[1] http://www.answers.com/mark#Technology

--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] The m element [em and strong]

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:05:12 +0530, Øistein E. Andersen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

> On 8 Feb 2007, at 9:42AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> "importance" is differen[t] from "emphasis".
>
> This is indeed what the current version of the specification says, but I 
honestly
> think this distinction is too artificial to work in practice.

Indeed.

> The Oxford English Dictionary defines one of the meanings of emphasis thus:
>> Stress of voice laid on a word or phrase to indicate that it implies 
something
>> more than, or different from, what it normally expresses, or simply to mark
>> its importance.
>
> The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(typography)
> is also relevant to the more general em/strong/m/b/i discussion, as it clearly
> defines any change in font style as a kind of emphasis.
>
> Perhaps the most logical solution would be to keep only  as a general
> emphasis element and allow i/b/u and possibly others to be used at the 
> author's
> discretion, but with the same semantics as .
>
> The semasiologists amongst you are unlikely to approve of such a flagrant 
> lack 
of
> inherent meaning, but insisting on too fine-grained distinctions, influenced 
by
> more or less arbitrary conventions in modern Western typography, is not 
helpful either.

As a semantics fanatic, who happens to believe that the web works best when it 
aligns with the way people behave, I think this proposal is far and away the 
most sensible thing I have seen suggested on this topic.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Try Opera 9.1 http://opera.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:13:20 +0530, Martin Atkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:


> The *meaning* is that the content is highlighted.

Or, as the first few definitions I looked at all said, "emphasised".




-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Try Opera 9.1 http://opera.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element [em and strong]

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:53:15 +0100, Øistein E. Andersen wrote:
> David Latapie écrivit:
> 
>> Do you mean than focus is another subset of emphasis?
> 
> If you mean whether I think  conveys some sort of emphasis, then 
> the answer
> is yes.

You answered my question

> I do not argue that a distinction between emphasis indicated by the
> author and emphasis added afterwards is necessarily a bad idea, though.

Interesting idea.

>> An example where there is emphasis without importance is the 
>> “highlighting” of foreign words [...]:
> 
> Are they really not important? See Fowler below.
> As for screen readers, would it not be appropriate to read
> foreign words with an initial hesitation, slightly reduced
> speed or some other very slight emphasis?

I was just thinking accent, but I have very few information on the way 
they are working. I agree that “a few hesitation” is much easier to 
implement than the actual accent (which would require a huge database) 
and I can live with it.

> /Morrión/ is the Spanish word for what is (according to my 
> dictionary) usually
> written /morion/ in English.

I admit I just looked on Wikipedia, based on the French word morion. I 
mixed it up for a reason to long and too uninteresting to explain, but 
that ruined the example :/

> Let me quote from Fowler's /Modern English Usage/:

Thank you for this interesting reading. Secondarily, that shows that 
lexicalised foreign word shall not be italicised, as they are not 
supposed to grab the reader's attention (of course, this is context 
sensitive: “this place has a krast geology - by the way /krast/ is a 
Slovene word” - in the first occurence, the word is considered as 
English, it is lexicalised. In the second one, it is considered as a 
foreign word, appropriately pronounced the Slovene way)

> Therefore, defining  as denoting importance and pretending
> that the two are completely dissociated entities is unlikely to be 
> productive.

Well, I never had this intention  .
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

[whatwg] The m element [em and strong]

[Øistein E . Andersen]

David Latapie écrivit:

> Do you mean than focus is another subset of emphasis?

If you mean whether I think  conveys some sort of emphasis, then the answer
is yes.

I do not argue that a distinction between emphasis indicated by the
author and emphasis added afterwards is necessarily a bad idea, though.

> An example where there is emphasis without importance is the 
> “highlighting” of foreign words [...]:

Are they really not important? See Fowler below.
As for screen readers, would it not be appropriate to read
foreign words with an initial hesitation, slightly reduced
speed or some other very slight emphasis?

> /Conquistadores/ were wearing /morrión/
> Conquistadores were wearing morrións

> Conquistadores: foreign word, italic
> Morrión:important,italic
> 
> Can we say that both words are emphasized? Or only "morrión"?

/Morrión/ is the Spanish word for what is (according to my dictionary) usually
written /morion/ in English. There are therefore two reasons to italicise 
the name of the helmet in your example, 1) it is a foreign word, 2) it is
`important'.

Disregarding this complication, both words are clearly /typographically/
emphasised, and both deserve their emphasis because they are important,
albeit in different ways and for different reasons.
This may well mean that different mark-up is called for in the
two cases, but both words remain emphasised.

Let me quote from Fowler's /Modern English Usage/:

> italics have definite work to do when a word or two are so printed in the
> body if a roman-type passage.  They pull up the reader & tell him not to read
> heedlessly on, or he will miss some peculiarity in the italicized word.  The
> particular point he is to notice is left to his own discernment ;  the
> italics may be saying to him :---
>  a. ` This word, & not the whole phrase of which it forms part, contains the
> point ' :  It is not only /little/ learning that has been exposed to
> disparagement.
>  b. ` This word is in sharp contrast to the one you may be expecting ' :  It
> would be an ultimate benefit to the cause of morality to prove that
> honesty was the /worst/ policy.
>  c. ` These two words are in sharp contrast ' :  But, if the child never
> /can/ have a dull moment, the man never /need/ have one.
>  d. ` If the sentence were being spoken, there would be a stress on this
> word ' :  The wrong man knows that if /he/ loses there is no consolation
> prize of conscious virtue awaiting /him/.
>  e. ` This word wants thinking over to yield its full content ' :  Child-
> envy is only a form of the eternal yearning for something better than
> /this/ (i.e., the adult's position with all its disillusionments).
>  f. ` This word is not playing its ordinary part, but is a word as such ' :
> Here /will/ is wrongly used instead of /shall/.
>  g. ` This is not an English word or phrase ' :  The maxim that deludes us is
> the /progenies vitiosior/ of one to which the Greeks allowed a safer
> credit.
>  h. ` This word is the title of a book or a newspaper, or the name of a
> fictitious character ' :  The Vienna correspondent of /The Times/ reports
> that . . . / The man in /Job/ who maketh collops of fat upon his flanks /
> A situation demanding /Mark Tapley/.
> Such are the true uses of italics.

This passage hopefully illustrates that italics (like other kinds of emphasis)
are used for a vast variety of different purposes, and we cannot possibly
devise a different element for each (which would be the only truly semantic
solution).

My main point was and remains that importance and emphasis are intimately 
related.
Therefore, defining  as denoting importance and pretending
that the two are completely dissociated entities is unlikely to be productive.

-- 
Øistein E. Andersen

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 18:21:08 +, Nicholas Shanks wrote:
> Try to compare it with  and , it's an element concerned 
> with editing a document post-authorship, not marking up the 
> document's inherent structure.

Personally, I use / a lot on my blog, to show updates. I 
don't know if it supposed to be used that way, but this is an example 
of use outside of traditional, “diff-like” text editing.

You may have a point here. So we would have two dimensions (don't pay 
attention to the words):
- structure/intrinsic
- post-authorship/manipulation (like searching)
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Lachlan Hunt]

Leons Petrazickis wrote:

In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
(, , ). People don't necessarily mark
text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
drawing arrows -- but they do highlight.


Highlighting with a yellow highlighter, underlinging, circling or 
drawing arrow are all different forms of marking, and could all be 
marked up using the  element.  It is not restricted to just 
highlighting, though it may be the default presentation.


--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:43:20 +, Martin Atkins wrote:
> The *meaning* is that the content is highlighted.
> The concept of "highlighting" something is not presentational.
> 
> When I'm giving a speech, I can "highlight" a certain fact that my 
> listeners might not have been aware of. (e.g. by saying "Allow me to 
> highlight the fact that...")
> 
> "highlight" just means "draw attention to", which is exactly what 
> Google's cache highlighting is trying to do, and what a student 
> highlighting passages in a book is trying to do. The highlighting has 
> no effect on the content, it's just a navigation aid.

How does it differ from "important"?
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jonathan Worent]

--- Martin Atkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
> > 
> > On 8 Feb 2007, at 15:23, Leons Petrazickis wrote:
> > 
> >> In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
> >> background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
> >> (, , ). People don't necessarily mark
> >> text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
> >> drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
> >> students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
> >> sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.
> > 
> > In my eyes such an element is presentational – a more generic element, 
> > but one with semantic meaning, like  is far more relevant (although 
> > it may well be a good idea to suggest it be rendered as highlighted).
> > 
> 
> The *meaning* is that the content is highlighted.
> The concept of "highlighting" something is not presentational.

No the *meaning" is that the content is important.

> 
> When I'm giving a speech, I can "highlight" a certain fact that my 
> listeners might not have been aware of. (e.g. by saying "Allow me to 
> highlight the fact that...")
> 
> "highlight" just means "draw attention to", which is exactly what 
> Google's cache highlighting is trying to do, and what a student 
> highlighting passages in a book is trying to do. The highlighting has no 
> effect on the content, it's just a navigation aid.

By drawing attention to something you indicating that it is important.

> 
> While the presentation in graphical browsers would likely resemble that 
> of paper — that is, a yellow background — an aural browser wouldn't 
> draw 
> attention to the mark as it is being read. It would hopefully instead 
> allow a user to quickly skip between passages containing highlighted 
> text much as sighted people do with their eyes as they scan over a page 
> with highlighted text.
> 
> 



 

No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go 
with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.
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Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:23:59 +, Martin Atkins wrote:
> As for aural browsers, they too can implement the above navigation 
> aid, but allow the user to have the surrounding context read as well 
> so that it actually makes some sense, thus avoiding reading the 
> entire document just to locate the highlighted text.

Now this is something I didn't think about when saying “this is just 
like /”. Worth considering.
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Martin Atkins]

Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:


On 8 Feb 2007, at 15:23, Leons Petrazickis wrote:


In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
(, , ). People don't necessarily mark
text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.


In my eyes such an element is presentational – a more generic element, 
but one with semantic meaning, like  is far more relevant (although 
it may well be a good idea to suggest it be rendered as highlighted).




The *meaning* is that the content is highlighted.
The concept of "highlighting" something is not presentational.

When I'm giving a speech, I can "highlight" a certain fact that my 
listeners might not have been aware of. (e.g. by saying "Allow me to 
highlight the fact that...")


"highlight" just means "draw attention to", which is exactly what 
Google's cache highlighting is trying to do, and what a student 
highlighting passages in a book is trying to do. The highlighting has no 
effect on the content, it's just a navigation aid.


While the presentation in graphical browsers would likely resemble that 
of paper — that is, a yellow background — an aural browser wouldn't draw 
attention to the mark as it is being read. It would hopefully instead 
allow a user to quickly skip between passages containing highlighted 
text much as sighted people do with their eyes as they scan over a page 
with highlighted text.

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Nicholas Shanks]

On 8 Feb 2007, at 18:00, David Latapie wrote:


Problem with / is that its meaning is confusing.


I don't think it's any more confusing than  would be. See below...

And still don't see any difference with  or . How would  
you

pronounce an important word? How would you pronounce a highlighted
word? Even on the semantic level I can't see the point.


Try to compare it with  and , it's an element concerned  
with editing a document post-authorship, not marking up the  
document's inherent structure.


I don't think it would be confusing *provided* it was listed next to  
 and  on all those ‘Learn HTML5 in 24 Hours’ sites/books/ 
specifications that people will actually learn about it from. Doing  
this would allow 99% of such people to ignore it like they currently  
ignore  and , and therefore won't confuse anyone.


- Nicholas.

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Martin Atkins]

James Graham wrote:

Leons Petrazickis wrote:

They are marking the search terms with a highlighter. In an aural
browser, would these terms be read differently? Perhaps. Does this
transfer to mobile browsers? Very definitely.


How would an auraul browser treak these terms differently? I can perhaps 
imagine some sort of generated content e.g. the foo bar would be 
read "the foo `begin mark` bar `end mark`" but it's not entirely 
convincing.



[snip]
>
what useful features could a general purpose UA implement if 
this semantic information is made avaliable to it?




The first thing I tend to do when I load up a Google Cache result is do 
an inline find for one of my search keywords or manually scan the page 
for the yellow text. Some keyboard shortcuts or on-screen buttons for 
skipping back and forth between highlights would be nice.


I can't think of any use-cases for highlighting where this navigation 
aid *wouldn't* be useful. After all, the purpose of highlighting is to 
help your eyes locate important information more quickly; when you 
express it with markup, it can help your browser to help your eyes 
locate important information more quickly in a document that doesn't all 
fit on-screen at once.


As for aural browsers, they too can implement the above navigation aid, 
but allow the user to have the surrounding context read as well so that 
it actually makes some sense, thus avoiding reading the entire document 
just to locate the highlighted text.

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Geoffrey Sneddon]

On 8 Feb 2007, at 15:23, Leons Petrazickis wrote:


In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
(, , ). People don't necessarily mark
text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.


In my eyes such an element is presentational – a more generic  
element, but one with semantic meaning, like  is far more relevant  
(although it may well be a good idea to suggest it be rendered as  
highlighted).



- Geoffrey Sneddon

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 17:36:47 +, Nicholas Shanks wrote:
> File: 
> Browser: 
> File: 
> Browser: 

Like it :-)

> It seems to impart too much of a visual origin too. Like  and did.
> I still think  would be better. It's short enough not to be 
> annoying, and long enough to be self explanatory.

Problem with / is that its meaning is confusing.

And still don't see any difference with  or . How would you 
pronounce an important word? How would you pronounce a highlighted 
word? Even on the semantic level I can't see the point.

> If you set the background colour you MUST set the foreground colour too!
> mark { background-color: #FF6; color: black; }

Yes, definitely
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Nicholas Shanks]

On 8 Feb 2007, at 15:23, Leons Petrazickis wrote:


In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
(, , ).


I don't like the look of "" — it doesn't tell me what it does  
very well. Maybe it stands for Horizontal Italic, or is some kind of  
markup greeting element:


File: 
Browser: 
File: 
Browser: 

It seems to impart too much of a visual origin too. Like  and did.
I still think  would be better. It's short enough not to be  
annoying, and long enough to be self explanatory.



People don't necessarily mark
text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling,
drawing arrows...


...or highlighting with a fluorescent marker pen!


The default styling of  would be a neon yellow background.
Google's choice of #66 could well be suitable.


If you set the background colour you MUST set the foreground colour too!
mark { background-color: #FF6; color: black; }

- Nicholas.

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:23:33 +0100, Leons Petrazickis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

> In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
> background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
> (, , ). People don't necessarily mark
> text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
> drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
> students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
> sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.
>
> The default styling of  would be a neon yellow background.
> Google's choice of #66 could well be suitable.

A very good idea. I support it.

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:51:23 +0100, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Sure. But what useful features could a general purpose UA implement if this
> semantic information is made avaliable to it?

1. Offer navigation (next/previous) amonng highlighted regions in the document. 
(Probably only amongh  sharing the same class.)
2. Turn highligting on/off. Google currently implements it thorough page reload 
(serves a version without highligting), but this could be done client-side.


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 10:23:33 -0500, Leons Petrazickis wrote:
> On 2/8/07, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
> background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
> (, , ). People don't necessarily mark
> text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
> drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
> students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
> sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.

My opinion. Of course, feel free to discard it entirely.

==  is better than  ==
- is m/hi for highlighting? Or for marking future reference? Work notes 
(that I presently format with ) and search highlight (à la Google) 
seem to be grouped together, whereas they are much different.

I much prefer  than , because the former is closer to the use. 
Mark may be understood as *id* (for anchors), as *comments*, or *work 
notes*. For instance:

"HTML was released in 1992 check about the 1989 allegation"

No such misunderstanding with 

== hi is not necessary ==
What Google is doing is almost good (almost, because  would be 
better here). The highlighted words are the important ones. 
Highlighting could be some kind of . Still, we are in 
the importance mindset. And students highlighting whole paragraphs are 
doing just that. Denoting importance.

Well, I summed up my feelings. I would be delighted to be convinced I'm 
wrong.
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[James Graham]

Leons Petrazickis wrote:

They are marking the search terms with a highlighter. In an aural
browser, would these terms be read differently? Perhaps. Does this
transfer to mobile browsers? Very definitely.


How would an auraul browser treak these terms differently? I can perhaps imagine 
some sort of generated content e.g. the foo bar would be read "the foo 
`begin mark` bar `end mark`" but it's not entirely convincing.



In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
(, , ). People don't necessarily mark
text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.


Sure. But what useful features could a general purpose UA implement if this 
semantic information is made avaliable to it?


--
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
 -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Leons Petrazickis]

On 2/8/07, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> Leons, you forgot to CC the list.
>
> Leons Petrazickis wrote:
>> Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>>>  is for highlighting text that is of some interest to the reader,
>>> but it does not alter the meaning of the text itself.
>>
>> Would you say that  is semantic and  is presentational, with
>> the difference from   is in default formatting?  Or is "meaning"
>>  not quite the right word -  is  like a highlighter in revision
>> change tracking, meant to be seen and then discarded?
>
> No,  does have semantics.  It marks a specific point of interest, as
> you might do with a highlighter, it just doesn't alter the meaning of
> the text itself.

A marker element certianly has a few use cases: marking syntax highlighting e.g.
def 

One example would be the highlighting of terms in Google Cache:


This is Google's current syntax:
Primate

They are marking the search terms with a highlighter. In an aural
browser, would these terms be read differently? Perhaps. Does this
transfer to mobile browsers? Very definitely.

In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
background. I submit that a much better name for  is 
(, , ). People don't necessarily mark
text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.

The default styling of  would be a neon yellow background.
Google's choice of #66 could well be suitable.

--
Leons Petrazickis
Database Technology Advocate, IBM

I work on the free DB2 Express-C data server
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/

Re: [whatwg] The m element [em and strong]

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:35:12 +0100, Øistein E. Andersen wrote:
> On 8 Feb 2007, at 9:42AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> "importance" is differen[t] from "emphasis".
> 
> This is indeed what the current version of the specification says, 
> but I honestly
> think this distinction is too artificial to work in practice.

ditto, but I'm open to/welcoming arguments

> More importantly, emphasis is customarily used to convey importance, 
> which implies
> that the two concepts cannot be dissociated in HTML5 without causing 
> confusion.

Do you mean than focus is another subset of emphasis?

> The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(typography)
> is also relevant to the more general em/strong/m/b/i discussion, as 
> it clearly
> defines any change in font style as a kind of emphasis.

As a reminder: not only font-style, but also voice: 
voice-stress:moderate and voice-stress:strong also apply.

An example where there is emphasis without importance is the 
“highlighting” of foreign words (at least in French, please someone 
confirm for English):

/Conquistadores/ were wearing /morrión/
Conquistadores were wearing morrións
   font-style:italic 
font-style:italic
   voice-stress:normal 
voice-stress:moderate

(for the sake of simplicity, let's assume we wanted to emphasize the 
name of the helmet)

Conquistadores: foreign word, italic
Morrión:important,italic

Can we say that both words are emphasized? Or only "morrión"?
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[James Graham]

Lachlan Hunt wrote:

Leons, you forgot to CC the list.

Leons Petrazickis wrote:

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
 is for highlighting text that is of some interest to the reader, 
but it does not alter the meaning of the text itself.


Would you say that  is semantic and  is presentational, with 
the difference from   is in default formatting?  Or is "meaning"

 not quite the right word -  is  like a highlighter in revision
change tracking, meant to be seen and then discarded?


No,  does have semantics.  It marks a specific point of interest, as 
you might do with a highlighter, it just doesn't alter the meaning of 
the text itself.


A marker element certianly has a few use cases: marking syntax highlighting e.g. 
def 


--
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
 -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Walbert]

On Feb 8, 2007, at 8:14 AM, David Latapie wrote:


On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 07:59:44 -0500, David Walbert wrote:


I would be less concerned that it's a single letter than that "m" and
"em" are pronounced identically

On the top of my head...


(etc)

Fine -- you have me here on details -- but they are still similar in  
the languages you noted; they are only one letter apart; and given  
that the tag "em" is short for the English word "emphasis" (and  
despite any phonetic wrangling you might provide is pronounced just  
like the letter m by every English speaker with whom I work) I still  
say this is a problem. Elements so similar in meaning should have  
unmistakably different tags to avoid confusion. Confusion on  is  
bad enough already.






_
David Walbert
LEARN NC, UNC-Chapel Hill
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 07:59:44 -0500, David Walbert wrote:

> I would be less concerned that it's a single letter than that "m" and 
> "em" are pronounced identically (in English, and in the other 
> European languages I can think of offhand) -- which would be 
> confusing if one were trying to explain them aloud, especially given 
> how close they are semantically.

On the top of my head
English:
m [em]
em [i.em]

French:
m [ɛm]
em [ø.ɛm]

Spanish:
m [eme]
em [e.eme]

Slovene:
m [me]
em [e.me]

Not much problem there (I still am cautious about using single-letter 
elements, just making a point)
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Walbert]

On Feb 8, 2007, at 7:21 AM, David Håsäther wrote:


Henri Sivonen wrote:

On Feb 8, 2007, at 08:37, David Latapie wrote:

> I also agree with Nicholas Shank that  single-letter element  
shall be

> avoided. We have only 26 possibilities, no more.

None of those 26 possibilities are doing anyone any good if we never
dare to use them.


Agreed. However, I think single-letter names should be used only for
common element types. "P" is a good example IMO, "M" probably less so.


I would be less concerned that it's a single letter than that "m" and  
"em" are pronounced identically (in English, and in the other  
European languages I can think of offhand) -- which would be  
confusing if one were trying to explain them aloud, especially given  
how close they are semantically.



_
David Walbert
LEARN NC, UNC-Chapel Hill
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [whatwg] The m element [em and strong]

[Øistein E . Andersen]

On 8 Feb 2007, at 9:42AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> "importance" is differen[t] from "emphasis".

This is indeed what the current version of the specification says, but I 
honestly
think this distinction is too artificial to work in practice.

HTML4 clearly defines  and  as more or less (of) the same thing:
> EM:
> Indicates emphasis.
> STRONG:
>Indicates stronger emphasis.
>[...]
> EM and STRONG are used to indicate emphasis.

More importantly, emphasis is customarily used to convey importance, which 
implies
that the two concepts cannot be dissociated in HTML5 without causing confusion.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines one of the meanings of emphasis thus:
> Stress of voice laid on a word or phrase to indicate that it implies something
> more than, or different from, what it normally expresses, or simply to mark
> its importance.

The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(typography)
is also relevant to the more general em/strong/m/b/i discussion, as it clearly
defines any change in font style as a kind of emphasis.

Perhaps the most logical solution would be to keep only  as a general
emphasis element and allow i/b/u and possibly others to be used at the author's
discretion, but with the same semantics as .

The semasiologists amongst you are unlikely to approve of such a flagrant lack 
of
inherent meaning, but insisting on too fine-grained distinctions, influenced by
more or less arbitrary conventions in modern Western typography, is not helpful 
either.

-- 
Øistein E. Andersen

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Håsäther]

Henri Sivonen wrote:

On Feb 8, 2007, at 08:37, David Latapie wrote:

> I also agree with Nicholas Shank that  single-letter element shall be
> avoided. We have only 26 possibilities, no more.

None of those 26 possibilities are doing anyone any good if we never
dare to use them.


Agreed. However, I think single-letter names should be used only for
common element types. "P" is a good example IMO, "M" probably less so.

--
David Håsäther

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Henri Sivonen]

On Feb 8, 2007, at 08:37, David Latapie wrote:


I also agree with Nicholas Shank that  single-letter element shall be
avoided. We have only 26 possibilities, no more.


None of those 26 possibilities are doing anyone any good if we never  
dare to use them.


--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Rimantas Liubertas]

2007/2/8, Anne van Kesteren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
<...>

I think I agree that  should be dropped.

<...>

+1.


Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rimantas.com/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:46:09 +0100, Charles McCathieNevile  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Strong provides a strong emphasis, no?


Strong denotes importance (see the spec). This is a change from HTML4,
but HTML4 didn't really define the difference between emphasis and
strong emphasis anyway.


One is stronger than the other. Given that HTML5 allows nesting of  
emphasis, there is not much point in having the strong element as well,  
is there?


"importance" is difference from "emphasis".

I think I agree that  should be dropped. I believe such an element has  
never been requested before on www-html or equivalent fora.



--
Anne van Kesteren

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:46:09 +0100, Charles McCathieNevile <[EMAIL 
PROTECTED]>wrote:

> If I want to note a word in something someone else said ('"does emphasis 
> *change*
> the meaning", emphasis mine' is what you find in current usage) which tag do I
> use?

IMO this is exactly the use case for .


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:01:52 +0530, Lachlan Hunt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

> Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>> In what way, apart from denoting that something is particularly relevant 
within
>> a phrase in a given context, does emphasis change the meaning of something?
>
> The spec gives a good example showing how it changes the meaning.
>
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-em

Sorry, but while those are nice examples, I still don't understand how I could 
generalise from them in a way that would make sense to me, sufficient that I 
could translate the concept. The closest I can get is that one is meant for 
conveying something to do with expression in a human language, while the other 
is meant for anything that people wouldn't say. (Maybe I express this better 
below - I am not sure).

Which strikes me as an artificial dichotomy.

If I want to note a word in something someone else said ('"does emphasis 
*change* 
the meaning", emphasis mine' is what you find in current usage) which tag do I 
use?

>> Strong provides a strong emphasis, no?
>
> Strong denotes importance (see the spec). This is a change from HTML4,
> but HTML4 didn't really define the difference between emphasis and
> strong emphasis anyway.

One is stronger than the other. Given that HTML5 allows nesting of emphasis, 
there is not much point in having the strong element as well, is there? If em 
refers to the importance of some text in the context of the internal semantics 
of the text (where m refers to its importance in a context not generally 
derived 
from its internal semantics), then doesn't nesting it convey weighted 
importance?

It seems to me we could do away with both m and strong here and not lose 
anything (except that strong appears occasionally in the wild).

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
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Re: [whatwg] The m element

[David Latapie]

> Leons Petrazickis wrote:
> 
> No,  does have semantics.  It marks a specific point of interest, 
> as you might do with a highlighter, it just doesn't alter the meaning 
> of the text itself.
> 
>  isn't really needed for revision tracking, we have  and 
>  for that.  Though, another use case is that it could be used to 
> mark a section that needs to be reviewed and/or edited later.  That 
> could be particularly useful collaborative editing, like in a wiki.  
> That's often what I use the highlighter tool for in MS Word.

Hi,

I too can't see the point in this  element. Semantic highlighting 
already exists ( and , although I personally would prefer 
, so that we could get  too and so I 
would not need to use  anymore).

I also agree with Nicholas Shank that  single-letter element shall be 
avoided. We have only 26 possibilities, no more. We'd better be very 
careful on this. Even  is of doubtful use if we use the XHTML2 idea 
of anchoring anything.

As for the “need for editing/note”, this is how I use the 
element
-- 
 U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Lachlan Hunt]

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
In what way, apart from denoting that something is particularly relevant within 
a phrase in a given context, does emphasis change the meaning of something?


The spec gives a good example showing how it changes the meaning.

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-em


Strong provides a strong emphasis, no?


Strong denotes importance (see the spec).  This is a change from HTML4, 
but HTML4 didn't really define the difference between emphasis and 
strong emphasis anyway.


--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:21:49 +0530, Jonathan Worent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
> --- Lachlan Hunt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Leons, you forgot to CC the list.
>>
>> Leons Petrazickis wrote:
>> > Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> >>  is for highlighting text that is of some interest to the reader, but
>> >> it does not alter the meaning of the text itself.
>> >
>> > Would you say that  is semantic and  is presentational, with
>> > the difference from  is in default formatting? Or is "meaning"
>> > not quite the right word - is  like a highlighter in revision
>> > change tracking, meant to be seen and then discarded?

In what way, apart from denoting that something is particularly relevant within 
a phrase in a given context, does emphasis change the meaning of something?

(I am not being rhetorical here, I genuinely don't understand any difference. I 
don't know how representative I am of native english speakers, but I am a good 
translator into at least a couple of languages and I am at a complete loss as 
to 
how I would explain the difference in any of them).

>> No,  does have semantics. It marks a specific point of interest, as
>> you might do with a highlighter, it just doesn't alter the meaning of
>> the text itself.
>
> Isn't this what  is for? I.E. signifying the contained text is 
> somehow 
more important than
> the surrounding text but not changing the meaning.

Strong provides a strong emphasis, no? - where you really want to highlight 
something a lot...

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Try Opera 9.1 http://opera.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Jonathan Worent]

--- Lachlan Hunt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Leons, you forgot to CC the list.
> 
> Leons Petrazickis wrote:
> > Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> >>  is for highlighting text that is of some interest to the reader, but 
> >> it does not alter the meaning of the text itself.
> > 
> > Would you say that  is semantic and  is presentational, with 
> > the difference from   is in default formatting?  Or is "meaning"
> >  not quite the right word -  is  like a highlighter in revision
> > change tracking, meant to be seen and then discarded?
> 
> No,  does have semantics.  It marks a specific point of interest, as 
> you might do with a highlighter, it just doesn't alter the meaning of 
> the text itself.

Isn't this what  is for? I.E. signifying the contained text is somehow 
more important than
the surrounding text but not changing the meaning. 

 | 3.12.5 paragraph 3: "Changing the importance of a 
 | piece of text with the strong element does not change 
 | the meaning of the sentence."

> 
>  isn't really needed for revision tracking, we have  and  
> for that.  Though, another use case is that it could be used to mark a 
> section that needs to be reviewed and/or edited later.  That could be 
> particularly useful collaborative editing, like in a wiki.  That's often 
> what I use the highlighter tool for in MS Word.
> 
> -- 
> Lachlan Hunt
> http://lachy.id.au/
> 



 

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Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Feb 7, 2007, at 3:44 PM, Nicholas Shanks wrote:

On concern that we would be 'wasting' such a short element name for  
such an esoteric usage, why not call it  instead?


I agree, I think the spec should be hesitant to introduce additional  
single-letter element names.


Regards,
Maciej

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Nicholas Shanks]

On concern that we would be 'wasting' such a short element name for  
such an esoteric usage, why not call it  instead?


- Nicholas.

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Lachlan Hunt]

Leons, you forgot to CC the list.

Leons Petrazickis wrote:

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
 is for highlighting text that is of some interest to the reader, but 
it does not alter the meaning of the text itself.


Would you say that  is semantic and  is presentational, with 
the difference from   is in default formatting?  Or is "meaning"

 not quite the right word -  is  like a highlighter in revision
change tracking, meant to be seen and then discarded?


No,  does have semantics.  It marks a specific point of interest, as 
you might do with a highlighter, it just doesn't alter the meaning of 
the text itself.


 isn't really needed for revision tracking, we have  and  
for that.  Though, another use case is that it could be used to mark a 
section that needs to be reviewed and/or edited later.  That could be 
particularly useful collaborative editing, like in a wiki.  That's often 
what I use the highlighter tool for in MS Word.


--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Lachlan Hunt]

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
I fail to see how this is different from an em element... (very loose and abused 
semantics, but I dont see how adding a new element to mess up is helpful)


 is for emphasis,  is not.  They have very different meanings.


 one reason might be to highlight search terms, another may
be to mark errors in the document, or things you should remember
specifically

 in those cases the marked text has no extra meaning other
then how it would be viewed or interpreted. "highlighting does not
change the reading of the text..."


That's right, whereas  does change the meaning of the text.

 is for highlighting text that is of some interest to the reader, but 
it does not alter the meaning of the text itself.


--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Leons Petrazickis]

On 2/6/07, Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:13:27 +0100, Mikko Rantalainen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> Perhaps  should be considered as a special case of . I would have
> to agree that semantic value of  over  is next to meaningless. I
> think that one usable definition between  and  would be that 
> is meant for highlighting content for a single user and  is meant
> for emphasizing stuff in general. That would limit usage of  to
> dynamically generated content only, though, and reserving such a short
> tag for that purpose only doesn't seem reasonable.

IMO, the key difference between  and  is that  is intended to be
placed by somebody or something other than the author of the original text.


This distinction may be too fine for people to follow. It's
reminiscent of the rev VS rel distinction, which few people grasped.

Regards,
--
Leons Petrazickis
Database Technology Advocate, IBM

I work on the free DB2 Express-C database
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:25:37 +0530, Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

> On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:13:27 +0100, Mikko Rantalainen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps  should be considered as a special case of . I would have
>> to agree that semantic value of  over  is next to meaningless. I
>> think that one usable definition between  and  would be that 
>> is meant for highlighting content for a single user and  is meant
>> for emphasizing stuff in general. That would limit usage of  to
>> dynamically generated content only, though, and reserving such a short
>> tag for that purpose only doesn't seem reasonable.
>
> IMO, the key difference between  and  is that  is intended to be
> placed by somebody or something other than the author of the original text.

HTML doesn't really imply that an original author or later editor decided on 
what markup to use.

> Highlighting search hits is one of the examples (the hits are marked by the
> search engine, not by the author of the text). Another example can be quoting
> someone and using  to mark the words of particular importance — not in the
> cited author's opinion, but rather in the context where the quote appears.
>
> Example:
>
> Another example is this sentence: Hard labour has turned monkeys
> into human beings. Note the use of British spelling.
>
> Using  in this example wouldn't be appropriate because it would imply 
> that 
“labour”
> is the most important word in the sentence.

No, it just implies that in the context of this page as delivered, the word is 
emphasised for some reason (which you have to guess from context unless you are 
going with RDFa or some microformat or something).

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Try Opera 9.1 http://opera.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Alexey Feldgendler]

On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:13:27 +0100, Mikko Rantalainen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

> Perhaps  should be considered as a special case of . I would have
> to agree that semantic value of  over  is next to meaningless. I
> think that one usable definition between  and  would be that 
> is meant for highlighting content for a single user and  is meant
> for emphasizing stuff in general. That would limit usage of  to
> dynamically generated content only, though, and reserving such a short
> tag for that purpose only doesn't seem reasonable.

IMO, the key difference between  and  is that  is intended to be 
placed by somebody or something other than the author of the original text. 
Highlighting search hits is one of the examples (the hits are marked by the 
search engine, not by the author of the text). Another example can be quoting 
someone and using  to mark the words of particular importance — not in the 
cited author's opinion, but rather in the context where the quote appears.

Example:

Another example is this sentence: Hard labour has turned monkeys 
into human beings. Note the use of British spelling.

Using  in this example wouldn't be appropriate because it would imply that 
“labour” 
is the most important word in the sentence.


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Henri Sivonen]

On Feb 6, 2007, at 13:18, Elliotte Harold wrote:


u --> m


FWIW, I've already suggested dropping m and repurposing u for the use  
case.


--
Henri Sivonen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Elliotte Harold]

A possibility:

i --> em
b --> strong
u --> m
s --> 


--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Mikko Rantalainen]

Sarven Capadisli wrote:

re: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-m

Following is a conversation from #whatwg on freenode.

 if anyone would like to explain the `m` element further, i'd
appreciate it. couldn't get much info out of the whatwg Archives

 you use it to mark text

 'mark' as in making the location of the content more
significant then the rest?
[...]
 in those cases the marked text has no extra meaning other
then how it would be viewed or interpreted. "highlighting does not
change the reading of the text when you're reading straight through,
it just helps you find the bits you should pay attention to." -
http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005-May/003946.html


Perhaps  should be considered as a special case of . I would have 
to agree that semantic value of  over  is next to meaningless. I 
think that one usable definition between  and  would be that  
is meant for highlighting content for a single user and  is meant 
for emphasizing stuff in general. That would limit usage of  to 
dynamically generated content only, though, and reserving such a short 
tag for that purpose only doesn't seem reasonable.


I'd rather suggest ,  or role="marker">.


What's the deal with ,  and  anyway? Why not just define 
that one should use nested s for all the emphasis needed? What 
semantical value have  or  to offer over nested s? I hope 
that the answer is not "bolding" and "yellow background".


--
Mikko

Re: [whatwg] The m element

[Charles McCathieNevile]

I fail to see how this is different from an em element... (very loose and 
abused 
semantics, but I dont see how adding a new element to mess up is helpful)

my 2 cents

chaals

On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 01:19:56 +0100, Sarven Capadisli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> re: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-m
>
> Following is a conversation from #whatwg on freenode.
>
>  if anyone would like to explain the `m` element further, i'd
> appreciate it. couldn't get much info out of the whatwg Archives
>
>  you use it to mark text
>
>  'mark' as in making the location of the content more
> significant then the rest?
>
>  not sure what you mean with the location
>
>  where the mentioned text is in the document.
>
>  to me it seems to be more of a presentational issue then
> having a semantic meaning behind it
>
>  there may be different reasons behind why you want to mark
> or highlight a piece of text
>
>  for instance?
>
>  one reason might be to highlight search terms, another may
> be to mark errors in the document, or things you should remember
> specifically
>
>  in those cases the marked text has no extra meaning other
> then how it would be viewed or interpreted. "highlighting does not
> change the reading of the text when you're reading straight through,
> it just helps you find the bits you should pay attention to." -
> http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005-May/003946.html
>
>  in that sense, why not `span` with a class?
>
>  im trying to understand this better (not arguing with you) 
>
>  span with a class is longer to type 
>
>  that i can't argue 
>
>  Like on those pissantly annoying "Welcome Google user! You
> searched for xyz" pages, where xyz is highlighted
>
>  the 'text' though has no extra meaning. `m` seems to handle
> a presentational issue. like i was wondering, why not `span` with a
> class which can cover numerous cases similar to highlighting
>
>  i don't think highlighting is presentational
>
>  how should `m` be treated under Lynx?
>
>  it could have a different text color and you could have a
> shortcut key to jump to the next  element
>
>  as opposed to a predefined class name 'marked' that does just that?
>
>  i don't think  is any better than 
> except that the former is shorter
>
>  but thats introducing a new element for a very narrow usage
> especially where it has no extra meaning. given the idea that the
> reading of the marked text is no different then any other text on the
> page, i fail to see why a new element is necessary where `span` with a
> class can handle this scenario. i also can't come to terms with a new
> element being introduced because `span` with a class is too long in
> comparison to `m`. 
> 



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Try Opera 9.1 http://opera.com

[whatwg] The m element

[Sarven Capadisli]

re: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-m

Following is a conversation from #whatwg on freenode.

 if anyone would like to explain the `m` element further, i'd
appreciate it. couldn't get much info out of the whatwg Archives

 you use it to mark text

 'mark' as in making the location of the content more
significant then the rest?

 not sure what you mean with the location

 where the mentioned text is in the document.

 to me it seems to be more of a presentational issue then
having a semantic meaning behind it

 there may be different reasons behind why you want to mark
or highlight a piece of text

 for instance?

 one reason might be to highlight search terms, another may
be to mark errors in the document, or things you should remember
specifically

 in those cases the marked text has no extra meaning other
then how it would be viewed or interpreted. "highlighting does not
change the reading of the text when you're reading straight through,
it just helps you find the bits you should pay attention to." -
http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2005-May/003946.html

 in that sense, why not `span` with a class?

 im trying to understand this better (not arguing with you) :)

 span with a class is longer to type :)

 that i can't argue :)

 Like on those pissantly annoying "Welcome Google user! You
searched for xyz" pages, where xyz is highlighted

 the 'text' though has no extra meaning. `m` seems to handle
a presentational issue. like i was wondering, why not `span` with a
class which can cover numerous cases similar to highlighting

 i don't think highlighting is presentational

 how should `m` be treated under Lynx?

 it could have a different text color and you could have a
shortcut key to jump to the next  element

 as opposed to a predefined class name 'marked' that does just that?

 i don't think  is any better than 
except that the former is shorter

 but thats introducing a new element for a very narrow usage
especially where it has no extra meaning. given the idea that the
reading of the marked text is no different then any other text on the
page, i fail to see why a new element is necessary where `span` with a
class can handle this scenario. i also can't come to terms with a new
element being introduced because `span` with a class is too long in
comparison to `m`. :)