Re: [whatwg] Semantic use of the font element
On Thu, 12 Apr 2007, Nicholas Shanks wrote: I have a website which discusses typography, web design, and computer fonts. It recently occurred to me that my use of spans with style elements was not really the most semantic method of getting across my meaning, and I would be better using the font element. My content goes something like this: span style=font-family:HelveticaThis is a sample of Helvetica/spanbr span style=font-family:ArialThis is a sample of Arial/span Which loses its visual meaning if the CSS is stripped, overridden, or not understood, and further more I cannot supply fallback fonts (since that would create a misleading visual appearance) and so here contradict the CSS guidelines for the font-family property. Would it not be more correct to use: font face=HelveticaThis is a sample of Helvetica/fontbr font face=ArialThis is a sample of Arial/font In this instance I am saying to the browser that the font is the critical part of that run of text, and the fact that font doesn't support fall-back works in my favour here, as well as the usage being fully compatible with graphical UAs. I would argue that HTML is the wrong language for what you're trying to do. What you're conveying is intrinsically visual (media-specific) and you should use a media-specific format, like PDF. Indeed, this point was then put forward by a number of people: On Thu, 12 Apr 2007, Brady J. Frey wrote: [...] On Thu, 12 Apr 2007, David Walbert wrote: [...] On Thu, 12 Apr 2007, gary turner wrote: [...] On Thu, 12 Apr 2007, Bill Mason wrote: [...] On Thu, 12 Apr 2007, Dave Singer wrote: [...] HTH, -- Ian Hickson U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A/, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: [whatwg] Semantic use of the font element
That's an interesting one - but the idea of semantics for html is to use an element of meaning, which the font tag lacks in every case as it's a visual not a content representation? This is the same failure as using a span tag for your example, since span has no meaning. The sad part here is that if you want to have a visual representation in your HTML, you're going to have to use CSS or an image to display the example. So span is just as bad as font in this case, it lacks meaning, though I get what you're implying. Side note, there's no point in a break either if you're using a block level element, which implies the structure of the content. In the end, you've got a header element, and that's what the html should be displaying - it's the header of a document or document portion. How it looks is not semantic, even if it's a visual representation of a subject, that's the reason for CSS and/or images. If your way were true I could argue: blue type=squareThis is a blue square/blue Nicholas Shanks wrote: I have a website which discusses typography, web design, and computer fonts. It recently occurred to me that my use of spans with style elements was not really the most semantic method of getting across my meaning, and I would be better using the font element. My content goes something like this: span style=font-family:HelveticaThis is a sample of Helvetica/spanbr span style=font-family:ArialThis is a sample of Arial/span Which loses its visual meaning if the CSS is stripped, overridden, or not understood, and further more I cannot supply fallback fonts (since that would create a misleading visual appearance) and so here contradict the CSS guidelines for the font-family property. Would it not be more correct to use: font face=HelveticaThis is a sample of Helvetica/fontbr font face=ArialThis is a sample of Arial/font In this instance I am saying to the browser that the font is the critical part of that run of text, and the fact that font doesn't support fall-back works in my favour here, as well as the usage being fully compatible with graphical UAs. - Nicholas.
Re: [whatwg] Semantic use of the font element
On Apr 12, 2007, at 5:24 PM, Nicholas Shanks wrote: My content goes something like this: span style=font-family:HelveticaThis is a sample of Helvetica/ spanbr span style=font-family:ArialThis is a sample of Arial/span If the sense of the text absolutely depends on its being displayed in a particular font, might it be better to display it in an image? Helvetica and Arial are on almost every computer, but an image would leave no doubt, and since the content is, essentially, the visual representation of itself, an image would seem to me to be semantically appropriate. David
Re: [whatwg] Semantic use of the font element
David Walbert wrote: On Apr 12, 2007, at 5:24 PM, Nicholas Shanks wrote: My content goes something like this: span style=font-family:HelveticaThis is a sample of Helvetica/spanbr span style=font-family:ArialThis is a sample of Arial/span If the sense of the text absolutely depends on its being displayed in a particular font, might it be better to display it in an image? Helvetica and Arial are on almost every computer, but an image would leave no doubt, and since the content is, essentially, the visual representation of itself, an image would seem to me to be semantically appropriate. Agreed. Since the visual representation *is* the content, the font demo should definitely be an image or other graphic object. This has the further advantage of being UA, platform and resident-font agnostic. If the UA is non-graphic, the user would still have the opportunity to open the image in a viewer. There is no such option if you're dependent on style properties or upon the font tag. cheers, gary
Re: [whatwg] Semantic use of the font element
David Walbert wrote: On Apr 12, 2007, at 5:24 PM, Nicholas Shanks wrote: My content goes something like this: span style=font-family:HelveticaThis is a sample of Helvetica/spanbr span style=font-family:ArialThis is a sample of Arial/span If the sense of the text absolutely depends on its being displayed in a particular font, might it be better to display it in an image? Helvetica and Arial are on almost every computer, but an image would leave no doubt, and since the content is, essentially, the visual representation of itself, an image would seem to me to be semantically appropriate. Using an image would also avoid the issues that would come up if you were demonstrating a font via markup that a user doesn't happen to have installed. The browser could wind up defaulting to a completely different font than what you were attempting to illustrate. -- Bill Mason Accessible Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://accessibleinter.net/
Re: [whatwg] Semantic use of the font element
At 18:12 -0700 12/04/07, Bill Mason wrote: Using an image would also avoid the issues that would come up if you were demonstrating a font via markup that a user doesn't happen to have installed. The browser could wind up defaulting to a completely different font than what you were attempting to illustrate. I think we are all in violent agreement here. If you are trying to say something visual (it looks like this), then nothing works quite like a picture. Sounds like a truism, I know. -- David Singer Apple Computer/QuickTime
