I don't think we disagree on most of your points. I've never suggested that HTML can or should be able to mark up any and all types of structures; as you rightly point out that is the job of various XML vocabularies. And granted there are stylistic elements that have crept into HTML over time (mostly due to the lack of stylesheets in the early days), which I'm of course not recommending you use.
HTML is, however, good at marking up the basic content structures you identified: headings, paragraphs, lists etc. And of course its greatest strength is that it is widely understood by all types of user agents. So since you *are* using HTML after all, is there any harm in using the vocabulary it provides that will allow your content to be widely understood? That way when a blind user comes across your site and their screen reader encounters a <h2> element it can "present" it to the user in a meaningful way, or perhaps a user agent can automatically generate an outline of the document by inspecting the heading levels. All sorts of possibilities that a document made entirely of meaningless <div> elements does not provide. In my opinion you are underestimating the usefulness of the semantics associated with these structural HTML elements, and are throwing away *too much* information in the pipeline. Surely there's no advantage to throwing away that information, is there? Anyway, gotta get off my soapbox and back to work. ;-) I won't spend more time on this thread. --Jason > We must agree to differ - a pet peeve of mine is that people use HTML > as a data structure language rather than as a page mark up language > (cf TeX) :-) . HTML has absolutely nothing to do with data > structuring - it (with CSS) only determines what goes where on a > page. We are trying to use a language which is neither XML > (structural) or PostScript (true page mark up) which is why it needs > XML and CSS. > > The problem is that while HTML undoubtedly has some structural > information such as paras, headings, lists etc., these are about the > only ones it has. It also mixes in pure style constructs such as > italic (which tell you nothing about the structure and why they are > italic). > > To be really useful we need to have extra structural tags in the HTML > such as author, date, version, footnote, inline note, citation ... - > the list is obviously not insubstantial depending on the structure > you are representing. Since HTML is not extendable (that was why XML > was done) we have a problem. Not until XML + sensible style sheets > are used instead of HTML will there be a solution that satisfies both > of us. > > This is why Cocoon is so important - it is all a question of > information flow (or some might say, entropy). I can take too much > information (in XML) and deliver it in a variety of formats (HTML, > PDF etc) by losing information that I do not want. But I cannot go > the other way around. For example start with HTML or PDF and produce > XML that is the structure that the author intended. Although by > clever use of classes etc. you might end up with sufficient XML > granularity to achieve this, butI believe that this is against the > spirit of the whole thing. > > So, the question is, does it matter about divs and spans? I believe > not because I would not dream of taking HTML and try and do something > useful with it (screen scrapping for example) other than displaying > it on a browser. If required to interpret the data it is best to > deliver it in a form that is amenable to this: raw or processed XML. > > btw I did look at Firefox output with no style and it looked fine. I > agree you could not see the headings (they looked like paras) but it > certainly was not unreadable. I would totally agree with you if I had > used positional information for the flow, rather than simple vertical > stacking. Previous sites that I used Cocoon for always had a facility > to output the data for a variety of browsers including Lynx which is > styleless. > > Ultimately it is all a question of how you view HTML. There probably > is no "correct" answer to this (cf the big-endian, little-endian holy > wars of processor and bus design in the 1980s). Let us hope that XML > comes sooner rather than later to the Web. My opinion is that since > we are using HTML as page markup it does not really matter using divs > and spans, because we get very little other benefit from using <p> > and <h1> etc. However it is not something I would stake my life on. > It is all a m,atter of personal preference I guess. > > Thanks for the appreciation of the software though. > > - Hugh > > On 7 Aug 2006, at 16:45, Jason Johnston wrote: > >>> <t:p>Paloose is a simplified (much simplified) version of ... </t:p> >>> >>> There is nothing here that indicates the final look (obviously). The >>> relevant template >>> >>> <xsl:template match="t:p" mode="inline-text"> >>> <xsl:element name="div"> >>> <xsl:attribute name="class">normalPara</xsl:attribute> >>> <xsl:apply-templates mode="inline-text"/> >>> </xsl:element> >>> </xsl:template> >>> >>> translates this into a simple HTML div >>> >>> <div class="normalPara">Paloose is a simplified (much simplified) >>> version of ... </div> >> >> Argh! This is a particular pet peeve of mine. HTML provides the <p> >> element specifically for marking up paragraphs. By using a <div> >> you've >> removed any semantic meaning from the markup! It might as well not be >> HTML at all. You can apply the same CSS styles to any HTML >> element, so >> why not use something that carries a well-known semantic meaning >> that can >> be interpreted equally well by non-visual means, and that has a useful >> default styling for when your CSS isn't applied? Same goes for >> headings: >> <h1>, <h2>, etc. are much more appropriate than divs with special >> classes. >> >> I always find it a good exercise when building a site to view it >> without >> any CSS applied (in Firefox: View->Page Style->No Style), and if I can >> still clearly see the structure of the page's content (heading >> hierarchy, >> paragraphs, lists, etc.) then it's good. If on the other hand all the >> paragraphs and headings run together without any visual clues to their >> meaning (as happens with the Paloose site!) then I've probably got >> some >> work to do. >> >> Sorry to get off-topic, just hate to see <div> and <span> over-used in >> place of perfectly good semantic HTML. >> >> Nice software though! I look forward to giving it a try. :-) >> >> --Jason >> >> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> > > ================================= > Dr H.S. Field-Richards > MIEE MIEEE CEng BSc PhD > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.hopvine-music.com > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
