Am 30.12.2010 um 02:47 schrieb Ian Hickson:

> On Tue, 30 Nov 2010, Martin Janecke wrote:
>> 
>> I support this idea and I'd certainly use it. For example, I'm currently 
>> copying an old rhyme book to hypertext and would love to mark 
>> historically correct (but now incorrect) spelling, spelling 
>> intentionally done wrong for better rhyming (yes, people did this in the 
>> past) and unintentional errors from the book semantically. I think it is 
>> important to note where those errors are done intentional (by me, the 
>> publisher of the web page) in contrast to errors accidentally added by 
>> me that differ from the copied book.
> 
> <mark> is the element for this purpose.



I don't think <mark> is appropriate for what I meant.

I as the publisher usually don't mean[1] to point a readers attention at 
spelling errors by someone I quote, I just want to be able to add semantic 
markup that identifies a part of text as deliberately published just the way it 
is published. Here's an example of a webpage quoting the US constitution 
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States_of_America#Section_2:

"The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers"

I'd like to be able to code this as

"The House of Representatives shall <sic>chuse</sic> their Speaker and other 
Officers"

to record that I intentionally wrote "chuse", not "choose", as "chuse" is 
exactly what the constitution says. But I wouldn't highlight "chuse" to the 
reader. The fact that there's archaic spelling in the constitution is not what 
the page is about and irrelevant[1] to the common reader e.g. in context of 
learning about the US legislative branch, and hence not worth being marked with 
<mark>.

Using <mark> on the original author's spelling errors, idiosyncrasies etc. 
would often even distract[1] readers from what is to be expressed with a quote. 
Consider a reader who searches for the term "speaker" at 
http://en.wikisource.org/ -- clearly the term "speaker" is of major importance 
to him, "chuse" is not. The returned search result should look like this:

Constitution of the United States of America:
... House of Representatives shall <sic>chuse</sic> their <mark>Speaker</mark> 
and other Officers ...

Regards,
Martin

___

[1] compare with 
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/text-level-semantics.html#the-mark-element:

The mark element represents a run of text in one document marked or highlighted 
for reference purposes, <mark>due to its relevance</mark> in another context. 
When used in a quotation or other block of text referred to from the prose, it 
indicates a highlight that was not originally present but which has been added 
to <mark>bring the reader's attention</mark> to a part of the text that might 
not have been considered important by the original author when the block was 
originally written, but which is now under previously unexpected scrutiny. When 
used in the main prose of a document, it indicates a part of the document that 
has been highlighted <mark>due to its likely relevance</mark> to the user's 
current activity.

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