Hi, > Incidentally, I'm surprised that more people here haven't jumped in on > the discussion. Are all other web standards folks on here really in > agreement that (X)HTML is a visual language by design, or at least has a > strong bias towards the visual? I would have thought not, but there you > go...naive little old me...
Well, since you prompt... :) I see XHTML as a fairly generic method of marking up content according to meaningful definitions of communication items. We define which bits of data are headings, paragraphs, etc... but ideally when creating the XHTML we should have absolutely no thoughts about how it will look (eg. screen), sound (eg. reader) or feel (eg. braille printer). When I say generic I mean it's purposefully independent of any specific deliver/rendering mechanism. Realistically there is a limited set of options; we don't have a way to have our content spoken by robots including gestures, intonation and facial expressions. But within available options XHTML has no bias. Any bias towards the visual is just a reflection on the fact that today's computers are mostly used to silently display visual renderings of information. To put it another way, it's the way we use the web which puts an emphasis on the visual aspects... it is not the underlying markup. The line was definitely blurred with earlier versions of HTML, which included non-structural elements like FONT, B, I, U, etc. I think - getting back to the original post - the HR element suffers due to bad naming. "Horizontal Rule" is a visual description of how a separator might commonly be rendered. Its purpose is to separate two areas of content. It is not actually a style item, since it provides a clear boundary between pieces of content which need to be retained at all times. "Separator" is a much better description/definition, but we're not up to XHTML 2 yet so HR it is. So... yes, I think HR has a place as content despite the name. I personally use them between blog posts, since blog posts are a series of unrelated sections with the same heading level. I tend to hide them using CSS, replacing them with something I consider more aesthetically pleasing (eg. a border around the entire post). But that's also since I expect people with screen readers to disable CSS. If you're blind you don't need CSS and it's a waste of time and bandwidth; if you're using a screen zoom you'll stick with the page design. Both ways there is a clear separator. h -- --- <http://www.200ok.com.au/> --- The future has arrived; it's just not --- evenly distributed. - William Gibson ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
