Manuel GonzÃlez Noriega wrote:
Hi,
i want to comment on Matthew Thomas' 'When semantic markup goes bad' http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i
Basically, i think his main thesis is plain wrong
<cite> These arenât exhaustive lists, but as you can see, some reasons for using bold and italics donât have their own semantic HTML elements. This is why b and i exist</cite>
No, that's not why b and i exist. That's why span exists.
The way i see it, if you need an new html element that is not available,
you use 'span+appropiate identifier'
If you need a <vector> element, you compensate for the lack of it with
<span class="vector">R2</span> and then style it to bold.
If you want to quote something on a foreign language and want it to appear in italics, you don't (as MPT proposes) mark it up as <i>mi mama me mima</i>, you mark it up with <span class="foreign" lang="es">mi mama me mima</span> and then style it to your liking
If you have some time to read his post and comment on it, i'd really appreciate it :-)
I think Matthew is pointing out that many people are using (or suggesting) <strong> where <b> (or a styled <span>) would be better. He doesn't say that you must use <b> but explains why this element is in the specs.
Strictly spoken, <b> is purely presentational and should not replace an apropriate semantic tag (e.g. a headline), OTOH <span class="bold">foo</span> is a lot of code compared to <b>bar</b>. Both elements are semantically neutral.
Tonico
-- Tonico Strasser ?:-) http://Tonico.FreeZope.org
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