On 2.5.2012 4:39, Ashley Sheridan wrote:
On Wed, 2012-05-02 at 11:31 +1000, Shaun Moss wrote:
I know it's contentious, but as a teacher it's very simple to teach
students of HTML5 that:
<u> = underline
<b> = bold
<i> = italic
<s> = strikethrough
Of course, I also teach<strong> and<em>, but the simplest way to teach
<b> and<i> is that it's merely an easy way to create bold or italic
text when the meaning of<strong> or<em> doesn't apply. They represent
a convenience that spares the author the work of using span tags and
creating a CSS class with font-weight or font-style properties.<u> is
the same, just an easy way to create underlined text. It doesn't really
need semantics piled on top of it - that just makes it harder to teach
and learn. But using Chinese names or misspelled text as /examples/ of
when to use<u> is another matter.
I grok the desire to have all tags defined semantically, but if the
semantic definitions add unnecessary complexity, then it just seems like
a kludge. Anyone can understand<b> = bold.
Shaun
On 2012-04-30 3:46 PM, Andrés Sanhueza wrote:
The<u> element was made conforming due to widespread usage and for
some cases were other elements weren't suitable. However, I feel that
the current definition is not very clear, as it gives two somewhat
unrelated used for it: misspelled text and proper names on Chinese. I
believe that is fine if is one or the other, but by the current
definition seems that the purpose of retaining the element is merely
were to underline needs to be used to represent something regardless
what it is, which seems inconsistent with other similar tags that are
better defined to have more finite purposes that aren't based on the
fallback presentational look, even if relevant at the time of defining
those. By the definitions seems that proper names and book names are
suitable to be indicated by<b> and<cite> respectively; or some new
element altogether. I'm aware that the fallback look is an issue, yet
I believe it should be resolved in a more consistent way.
I still seems more important to ask why something should be bold or
italic. Surely getting students into the mindset of describing their
data is more beneficial?
Well I can imagine usage of italic or bold in text without <strong> and
<em> semantics... imagine prose about hero in quiet night and jet
passing above his/her head... the sound of the jet and the hero
response... nice adepts for italic and bold....
But yes... no reason for existence of b, u, s, i elements.
B.
