David Latapie wrote:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 19:09:24 +0000, Nicholas Shanks wrote:
My concern here is whether this is supposed to be an absolute or
relative value. Would <em level="3"><em level="-1">this</em></em>
result in an emphasis level of 2 (relative) or −1 (absolute). What
would level="+3" mean?
• I'd say: *default is 0*, so you would end up with 2. This is both
the most intuitive and the easier to implement, calculate, IMHO.
• +3 is really like bolder or smaller: this is a relative value[1]
<de-em>, <de-emph>, <subdue> or other new element
You meant tag ;-) This is my belief that, the less elements the
better. Negative values for de-emphasis is easier to handle: only one
element and sums go naturally (+1-2=-1). As I suggested earlier, the
tag could be <emph> with <em> and <strong> as transitional (and
convenient) shortcuts, respectively for <emph value="+1"> and <emph
value="+2">
And those who love highlighting text coulds use <emph value="+3"> ;-)
Please, how do you implement these features with CSS? I hope you're not
suggesting to add a specialized code path to support just emphasis and
de-emphasis.
I believe that <aside> and <small> are different from de-emphasis (that
would be <dem> IMHO). However, the <dem> element wouldn't be that often
used and it would be vital for it to be easily implemented. A new
element with specified semantics and a simple default CSS style would be
a nice choice. An example *implementation* could be a single CSS rule:
dem { opacity: 0.8 }
How hard it would be to implement the behavior David described above?
Take any existing UA as a base.
And why do I think that <aside> and <small> are different from <dem>?
Because I think <aside> (or a footnote) is something you can safely
ignore and is usually orthogonal to the rest of the content. <small> is
something you usually skip but you must be aware of the content (e.g. a
copyright or license boilerplate) - the key here is that the content is
often repeated but if you have read it *once*, then you may skip it
later. The <dem> would be something that you may skip without reading it
once but which is not orthogonal to the rest of the content and as such
shouldn't be considered equal to <aside>.
Example:
<p>One should <em>never execute <code>rm -rf /</code>
in a UNIX shell <dem>because doing so would remove
everything in the system</dem></em>.</p>
Here I think that the explanation is also something that should be
emphasized. However, the reader can safely ignore the explanation. I
think that <dem> shouldn't be considered to be equal strength to <em>
but something less. Logically it could be -0.5 emphasis.
--
Mikko
