Sarven Capadisli wrote:
re: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-m
Following is a conversation from #whatwg on freenode.
<csarven> if anyone would like to explain the `m` element further, i'd
appreciate it. couldn't get much info out of the whatwg Archives
<zcorpan> you use it to mark text
<csarven> 'mark' as in making the location of the content more
significant then the rest?
[...]
<csarven> 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 <m> should be considered as a special case of <em>. I would have
to agree that semantic value of <m> over <em> is next to meaningless. I
think that one usable definition between <m> and <em> would be that <m>
is meant for highlighting content for a single user and <em> is meant
for emphasizing stuff in general. That would limit usage of <m> to
dynamically generated content only, though, and reserving such a short
tag for that purpose only doesn't seem reasonable.
I'd rather suggest <em class="mark">, <em class="highlight"> or <em
role="marker">.
What's the deal with <em>, <strong> and <m> anyway? Why not just define
that one should use nested <em>s for all the emphasis needed? What
semantical value have <strong> or <m> to offer over nested <em>s? I hope
that the answer is not "bolding" and "yellow background".
--
Mikko
