On 11/1/06, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:
>> To take a slight detour into the (hopefully not too) abstract, what do
>> people think the fundamental point of semantics in HTML is?
>>
>
> I'd say Machine readability.
>
Sorry to be pedantic but what do you mean "machine readable"? All
(conforming) HTML documents are "machine readable" in the sense that
they can be parsed by machines, and no machine is capable of
understanding the actual content, so presumably you mean something else.
I mean so that a machine can understand what you are saying... what you mean.
For example... I could write...
And Jane Blow said... you are so cool. To which I said... I know.
A machine (of today) isn't going to understand this. But I could mark it up with....
<cite>
And
<address class="vcard"><a rel="friend met" class="url fn" href="" http://jane.example.com/">Jane Blow</a></address>
said...
<q cite="" href="http://jane.example.com/1234.html#xyz">http://jane.example.com/1234.html#xyz ">you are so cool</q>.
</cite>
<cite>
To which
<address class="vcard"><a class="url fn" href="" href="http://joe.example.com/"> http://joe.example.com/"><abbr title="John Doe">I</addr></a></address>
said...
<q cite="" href="http://jane.example.com/1234.html#zzz">http://jane.example.com/1234.html#zzz ">I know</q>.
</cite>
And a machine would understand that alot better.
Make sense? (Or should I explain more?... I'm being lazy by asking this... I just don't feel like doing alot of typing right now... but if it needs more explanation let me know.)
See ya
--
Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
charles @ reptile.ca
supercanadian @ gmail.com
developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
