has html gone too far?
non-english speaker
posting silly questions again:) And I am trying to speak the best English as
I can.
When I first learn html, it is clear and easy. Now XHTML 1.1 is a complex
combination of concepts. Would XHTML finally comes to be a toy of experts,
and the public insists on old HTML?
I know a very important concept of modern html is to separate presentation
from document logic. It's a good idea, but I wonder how much should "logic"
be separated from "presentation". Logic and presentation are the same thing
for more than 3000 years (before printers), and during the time we invented
so many ways of presentation that *has* logic meaning. Punctuate for
example, and empty line, text indent are other examples. These
"presentation"s does have meanings.
The "Q" tag (in HTML4) is a good example that we are trying to solve a
problem we never meet. IE refuse to support "Q" tag till now, and it is now
removed from XHTML 2.0 draft (I didn't check xhtml 1). The failure of "Q" is
that it wish to replace a punctuate, the quote mark. This is the first
obvious intent to replace a meaningful "presentation". The HTML4 suggest we
write:
He said: <q> we will never use the Q tag. </q>
If that is the way it is, then what is the quote mark used for? People may
say on visual rendering the browsers can choose the correct quote mark to
use, because the quote mark varies form language to language, but do the
browsers really think they are smarter on choosing correct quote marks then
the document author? If <Q> is successful, the next tag we will create would
be <bookcite> (different slightly from <cite>), and then <geography_name>
and so like, so we finally made the world more complicated. Luckily the <Q>
is removed now.
After that, <quote> is added to the XHTML 2 draft. It does not replace
punctuates, that's good, HTML tags are not going to replace punctuates. I
wish it is a good attempt, and I wish html group never remove silly tags in
future (they shouldn't even create them).
In XHTML2 people are trying to remove <hr>, or rename it <separate/>. I hope
that won't happen. Is it because <hr> is "presentation", and should not be
in "document logic"? I always think <hr> is that sort of "presentation" that
has meaning, like punctuates. When you see a horizon rule you often know
what that means, a <HR> is not always a separator, <HR> is a horizon rule as
it should be, a horizon rule has different meaning than a vertical rule or
page break or whatever.
If we want pure logic separated from presentation, that's possible. After a
few years this can be achieved, if we really want it happen. So the HTML in
the year 2010 would possibly be:
<sentence>
<subject>
<pronoun personal="first">I</pronoun>
</subject>
<verb tense="present" voice="active">hate</verb>
<object>
<noun><abbr>HTML</abbr></noun>
</object>
<punctuate>!</punctuate>
</sentence>
And the logic is so well-formed that if we just want to, say to high-light
all passive verbs in the document it is done by simply edit a CSS.
And the HTML in the year 2100 would probably be:
<sentence>
<subject>
<pronoun personal="first">0023090904390<!-- 0023090904390 is the computer
logic of English "I" --></pronoun>
</subject>
..........
And the logic is so well-formed that if we want to see the document in other
languages, say display it in Dutch, it is done by edit a CSS, because
language is a "presentation" thing, of people's mind.
Jim Dabell
> I am a html learner. I started to learn html since html 4. So perhaps I am
> posting silly questions again:) And I am trying to speak the best English
> as I can.
>
> When I first learn html, it is clear and easy. Now XHTML 1.1 is a complex
> combination of concepts. Would XHTML finally comes to be a toy of experts,
> and the public insists on old HTML?
Doubtful. xml is simpler than sgml - and that is the only major difference
between html 4.01 and xhtml 1.0. From an author's point of view, there is
very little difference between xhtml 1.0 strict and xhtml 1.1.
> I know a very important concept of modern html is to separate presentation
> from document logic.
Ahh, so this isn't xhtml vs html, it's strict vs transitional.
> It's a good idea, but I wonder how much should "logic" be separated from
> "presentation".
As much as possible. It's very good for maintainability and collaboration,
among other things.
> Logic and presentation are the
> same thing for more than 3000 years (before printers), and during the time
> we invented so many ways of presentation that *has* logic meaning.
> Punctuate for example, and empty line, text indent are other examples.
> These "presentation"s does have meanings.
All those years ago, there was no advantage in making logic easily
interpretable. Now it is useful because if computers can understand the
logical structure of a document, it can perform useful tasks that it
wouldn't be able to otherwise.
> The "Q" tag (in HTML4) is a good example that we are trying to solve a
> problem we never meet. IE refuse to support "Q" tag till now, and it is
> now removed from XHTML 2.0 draft (I didn't check xhtml 1). The failure of
> "Q" is that it wish to replace a punctuate, the quote mark. This is the
> first obvious intent to replace a meaningful "presentation". The HTML4
> suggest we write:
>
> He said: <q> we will never use the Q tag. </q>
>
> If that is the way it is, then what is the quote mark used for? People may
> say on visual rendering the browsers can choose the correct quote mark to
> use, because the quote mark varies form language to language, but do the
> browsers really think they are smarter on choosing correct quote marks
> then the document author?
Well the browsers don't "think" anything. The user-agent is in the best
position to decide what is suitable for the user. For instance, The
standard character used by most English speakers is also used as the
character for inches ("). These are characters. The markup isn't meant to
replace characters, it is meant to encode meaning. Write an application
that takes quotations from the web. Which is easier - hooking into a html
parser and pulling out all the <q> elements? Or using some heuristic to
decide what characters are used as quotation delimiters, and what special
cases mean they should be ignored?
> If <Q> is successful, the next tag we will
> create would be <bookcite> (different slightly from <cite>), and then
> <geography_name> and so like,
You are arguing that <q> elements are bad because of the possible existence
of some other element in the future?
> so we finally made the world more complicated. Luckily the <Q> is removed
> now.
No, I don't see it as being more complicated, I see it as being able to
encode meaning more accurately.
> After that, <quote> is added to the XHTML 2 draft. It does not replace
> punctuates, that's good, HTML tags are not going to replace punctuates. I
> wish it is a good attempt, and I wish html group never remove silly tags
> in future (they shouldn't even create them).
I think you are confused about the intention of html. The default rendering
of a <quote> element is not very important. After all, it's just a couple
of lines in the user-agent stylesheet.
> In XHTML2 people are trying to remove <hr>, or rename it <separate/>. I
> hope that won't happen. Is it because <hr> is "presentation", and should
> not be in "document logic"?
Yes. <hr /> == "horizontal rule". This is a graphical description.
<separator /> or similar is not a graphical description.
> I always think <hr> is that sort of
> "presentation" that has meaning, like punctuates.
Yes, it has meaning. It is a kind of separator - hence it is not being
removed, it is being replaced. Another option would be to wrap whatever it
is separating in <section> or <div> elements.
> When you see a horizon
> rule you often know what that means, a <HR> is not always a separator,
Can you give an example of when it shouldn't be treated as a separator?
[snip]
> If we want pure logic separated from presentation, that's possible. After
> a few years this can be achieved, if we really want it happen. So the HTML
> in the year 2010 would possibly be:
> <sentence>
> <subject>
> <pronoun personal="first">I</pronoun>
> </subject>
> <verb tense="present" voice="active">hate</verb>
> <object>
> <noun><abbr>HTML</abbr></noun>
> </object>
> <punctuate>!</punctuate>
> </sentence>
> And the logic is so well-formed that if we just want to, say to high-light
> all passive verbs in the document it is done by simply edit a CSS.
[snip]
You are assuming that efficient authoring and encoding are not requirements
of the html working group, or that they consider that level of granularity
to be useful enough to outweigh the costs.
Your subject line was "has html gone too far?" How does your speculation
about seven years from now, with no compelling reasoning behind it, relate
to the present day html, and whether or not it has "gone too far"?
--
Jim Dabell
Isofarro
> Write an application
> that takes quotations from the web. Which is easier - hooking into a html
> parser and pulling out all the <q> elements? Or using some heuristic to
> decide what characters are used as quotation delimiters, and what special
> cases mean they should be ignored?
I've attempted the latter - and its a right royal pain in the ass, and the
websites I was using were mainstream news sites. I'd much prefer the
former, but that would require news websites to actually have meaningful
and consistent markup -- then I could write my own little utility and bring
together the same story by different websites all in one document (a
personalised version of http://news.google.com/ with nifty features like an
RDF-like relationship between stories and subject matter).
<rant type="mild">
One day.... In its current state, the web is more a manual process than
pre-industrial revolution. So much for computers supposedly making our
lives easier by automation.
</rant>
--
Iso.
FAQs: http://html-faq.com http://alt-html.org http://allmyfaqs.com/
Recommended Hosting: http://www.affordablehost.com/
Web Standards: http://www.webstandards.org/
andkonDOTcom
You couldn't be more right, logical tags are overly arbitrary.
What would have happened if instead of <table> we would have had
<pagelayout> with the same attributes as <table>? It would be accepted
by even the most purist of the purists since it is
"non-presentational." Think of <pagelayout> as <div> but with all the
table layouts, renamed of course to neutral non-presentational names.
And what's the point of having <strong> and <em> when <b> and <i> do
the same? Can someone reading a webpage tell the difference if the
author used <strong> or <b>? No. And what does <b> stand for? Most
people would agree that if they saw something bolded, it was more
important then everything else. And why use <em> instead <i>?
Logical tags are an end to themselves because if they were truly
implemented, we would have chaos. Let's have a tag for <newspaper>
since using <i> is just so wrong. Or let's have <scientific
type="species">sapiens</scientific> since <i> is just so wrong. And as
weiwuzhang(at)hotmail(dot)com wrote, why can't we just use " " for
quoting (as anybody in their right mind would use) instead of using
<q> or <quote> or whatever the w3 tried to do now.
HTML should be kept easy and fun. For starters, the w3.org should
resume where it left off at HTML 4.01. I liked the way XHTML forced
clean code (the only thing it really did as the HTML to XML conversion
of the web was a big joke). The w3.org should focus more of its
efforts on trying to work with the "evil" people who like use
presentation (everyone from <b> to flashturbators) and improve HTML
based on that. Instead of condoning the idiocies of "CSS is the only
way to design" ideology, they should perhaps improve HTML. And
perhaps, a tutorial on html or css wouldn't hurt. Don't anybody worry
though about that last one, I got that covered.
And I don't think anyone should worry a great deal about XHTML 2.0. It
won't catch on as no one wants a neutered HTML that's just plain as a
bottle of water.
Remi Sabourin
books put these kinds of tags in a separate chapter.
Is the browser supposed to know better than the author how to present
the content? In some cases, yes! That's the whole point of more
valuable markup. Simple text browsers could display it with quotes,
some browsers might wish to render it in italic, aural browsers might
treat it a certain way, search engine robots might be able to index
the quotes on websites, software might be able to build a table of
citations out of articles on the web... etc. etc. You have to use
your imagination!
Of course, you can ignore the tags if you want absolute control over
your page on all browsers. However, don't underestimate how useful
they can be for the user. For example, the acronym tag is interpreted
by most browsers so as to pop up a "tooltip" when the mouse hovers
over the acronym and display what the acronym stands for. Not
necessary, yet user-friendly. Without the markup, the browser can't
tell if the text is an acronym or not.
<hr> is different. This is not logical markup, it is physical. You
can easily imitate <hr> with CSS now (assigning a style to a <div> tag
for example), and are not limited to the one physical look of the
horizontal rule the browser supplies.
Summary: CSS for full control, logical markup to give the browser (and
users) more control
Keith Bowes
> When I first learn html, it is clear and easy. Now XHTML 1.1 is a complex
> combination of concepts. Would XHTML finally comes to be a toy of experts,
> and the public insists on old HTML?
>
In XHTML 2.0, only the core text features will be in it. You can use
XForms, XFrames, etc. to do other things. This is a good thing (tm)
because you can use only the languages whose features you want, without
needing to have everything lumped in an overly-complex language. I.e,
you don't have to use the SuperCoolML namespace if you don't want it.
Keith Bowes
> And what's the point of having <strong> and <em> when <b> and <i> do
> the same? Can someone reading a webpage tell the difference if the
> author used <strong> or <b>? No. And what does <b> stand for? Most
> people would agree that if they saw something bolded, it was more
> important then everything else. And why use <em> instead <i>?
>
<b> and <strong> are different syntactically. Just like "red" and "the
color of strawberries" are different. But in the modern CSS world,
logical elements do make more sense. You can make <strong> a red,
non-bold font (and it would retain its meaning). But if you do that for
<b>, it wouldn't be bold and would have no meaning.
Not that you understand and not that I explain things well. But in any
case, I used to think about this the same way is you, but logical markup
that user agents may interpret in any way and that may be influenced by
style sheets does make more sense than describing the physical
attributes that exist in one scenario out of the many possible.
Alan J. Flavell
> <hr> is different. This is not logical markup, it is physical.
Indeed, and that's why it's criticised as HTML markup.
> You can easily imitate <hr> with CSS now
To do that properly depends on knowing what logical function <hr> is
supposed to serve. Since that's not clearly defined, the result is
also somewhat unclear.
>(assigning a style to a <div> tag
You mean like
<div ...>
some paragraphs etc.
</div>
with a style proposing a bottom border to the div? i.e instead of
some paragraphs etc.
<hr>
If so, then I'd agree: and maybe it would have been better if HTML had
been defined that way in the first place.
> for example), and are not limited to the one physical look of the
> horizontal rule the browser supplies.
Agreed...
> Summary: CSS for full control,
Now, here we must part company. On the WWW you simply do not have
control. CSS is nothing more than a proposal (some call it a
"suggestion"), which the client is free to cascade with their own
stylesheet (part of the significance of the term "cascading") or,
indeed, to ignore it entirely if found inappropriate to their browsing
situation.
> logical markup to give the browser (and users) more control
Logical markup is so-called because it's intended to mark up the
logical structure of the information provided, without direct
reference to its presentation. Presumably the author does indeed
"control" the logical structure of their content...
But when it comes to presentation, "control" is something else. I'd
suggest standing back from it. Your proposals can be much more
effective when they're optional. "Control" is for control freaks, not
for web authors. At least, that's my advice - in the end it's every
author's responsibility to decide for themself (within the scope of
what's legal in their jurisdiction), but overall I've experienced
better results from flexible web sites, and tried to aim for that in
my own compositions.
Dominik Boecker
> And what's the point of having <strong> and <em> when <b> and <i> do
> the same?
They don't "do" the same. :-)
They have *different meanings*. Plain and simple. So easy is HTML...
Dominik
--
Nichts ist Idiotensicher, die Idioten sind einfach zu erfinderisch.
Michael 'Michi' Nahrath in dcsmi über den Win-IE6
PGP-Key available: http://www.dominik-boecker.de/Dominik-Boecker.asc
non-english speaker
"Remi Sabourin" <nt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b2c133c6.03010...@posting.google.com...
[snip]
> Is the browser supposed to know better than the author how to present
> the content? In some cases, yes! That's the whole point of more
> valuable markup. Simple text browsers could display it with quotes,
> some browsers might wish to render it in italic, aural browsers might
> treat it a certain way, search engine robots might be able to index
> the quotes on websites, software might be able to build a table of
> citations out of articles on the web... etc. etc. You have to use
> your imagination!
That's what I want to say, here you are making a mistake like a browser.
You said <q>Simple text browsers could display it with quotes, some browsers
might wish to render it in italic,</q> well, as far as I know there are 4
languages on the earth never use oblique (italic) at all. The author in that
language knows he should use a quotation mark instead of oblique style, but
the browser need to be carefully designed to realize this.
So a browser should not render something in someway just because it <q>wish
to</q>.
You talked about aural browsers. I agree that's a good reason. But if we
should design that kind of mechanism for aural browsers, we should also add
more tags to repersent the question marks and the commas and periods. Do you
really think marking up quotes for aural browsers are more important than
marking up questions?
> Of course, you can ignore the tags if you want absolute control over
> your page on all browsers. However, don't underestimate how useful
> they can be for the user. For example, the acronym tag is interpreted
> by most browsers so as to pop up a "tooltip" when the mouse hovers
> over the acronym and display what the acronym stands for. Not
> necessary, yet user-friendly. Without the markup, the browser can't
> tell if the text is an acronym or not.
I am a little afraid people would use it in some way it is not intended to
be used, because this tag has some different visual effect. Like
<abbr title="click on it to go back to my homepage">Homepage</abbr>
It is off topic :)
andkonDOTcom
> > hope that won't happen. Is it because <hr> is "presentation", and should
> > not be in "document logic"?
>
> Yes. <hr /> == "horizontal rule". This is a graphical description.
> <separator /> or similar is not a graphical description.
>
>
See my post on this subject on <pagelayout>.
> > I always think <hr> is that sort of
> > "presentation" that has meaning, like punctuates.
>
> Yes, it has meaning. It is a kind of separator - hence it is not being
> removed, it is being replaced. Another option would be to wrap whatever it
> is separating in <section> or <div> elements.
>
Yes, let's rename everything just so it doesn't seem presentational...
Once again, refer to my recommendation of <pagelayout>.
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom <andra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > And what's the point of having <strong> and <em> when <b> and <i> do
> > the same?
>
> They don't "do" the same. :-)
>
> They have *different meanings*. Plain and simple. So easy is HTML...
Meanings are useless if they mean the same thing, or suggest the same
idea. But don't let me fool you! Try it out on your own. <b>This
appears bolded.</b> and <strong>This appears bolded, too!</strong>
Now you could start arguing that a person could specify on their user
stylesheet this and that. However, <b> and what <b> does is widly
accepted as a sort of "making the affected words more important"
pretty much the same way you try to sell <strong>. There is no
difference between the two.
Why is it that we only have a handful of "logical" tags? We do not
have one for <whisper> (as a sort of anti-bold), <taxonomy>, or
<newspapercite>, or anything else. Why is it that if I want to quote
from a newspaper, I'd have to use <i>? <i> for newspaper citing is
accepted, just as <b> for important info is. Besides, we had those
logical tags, HTML would be a big mess of tags that do pretty much the
same as the next.
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> > And what's the point of having <strong> and <em> when <b> and <i> do
> > the same? Can someone reading a webpage tell the difference if the
> > author used <strong> or <b>? No. And what does <b> stand for? Most
> > people would agree that if they saw something bolded, it was more
> > important then everything else. And why use <em> instead <i>?
> >
>
> <b> and <strong> are different syntactically. Just like "red" and "the
> color of strawberries" are different. But in the modern CSS world,
> logical elements do make more sense. You can make <strong> a red,
> non-bold font (and it would retain its meaning). But if you do that for
> <b>, it wouldn't be bold and would have no meaning.
>
The color of strawberries is red. Why is there a need for two tags
that do the same, when you can have more of a general <b>? Ummmm...
NO! If you make <strong> not bold, it looses its meaning since anyone
with a visual browser will see plain red text. How could someone that
if something was <strong> if it wasnt bolded?
> Not that you understand and not that I explain things well. But in any
> case, I used to think about this the same way is you, but logical markup
> that user agents may interpret in any way and that may be influenced by
> style sheets does make more sense than describing the physical
> attributes that exist in one scenario out of the many possible.
I understand your lunacy completely. But then why don't we have
<newpapercite> and <scientific type="classification> when we just use
<i> for those? The four basic tags (<b>, <i>, <u>, and <tt>) are just
fine for HTML and we do not need (or even have because that would
cause chaos) idiotic tags that do the same as one of those four.
Isofarro
> The color of strawberries is red.
Not always. They are green before they ripen.
Timo Pirinen
> However, <b> and what <b> does is widly
> accepted as a sort of "making the affected words more important"
> pretty much the same way you try to sell <strong>. There is no
> difference between the two.
No it is not. <b> means bold (you know andky, those fat letters),
not "more important". <strong> means "something with strong
emphasis". But of course someone who chooses to be non compos mentis
rather than a child would not be able to see the difference.
--
Timo Pirinen
piri...@dlc.fi
Owen Jacobson
>> In XHTML2 people are trying to remove <hr>, or rename it <separate/>. I
>> hope that won't happen. Is it because <hr> is "presentation", and should
>> not be in "document logic"?
>
> Yes. <hr /> == "horizontal rule". This is a graphical description.
> <separator /> or similar is not a graphical description.
>
>> I always think <hr> is that sort of
>> "presentation" that has meaning, like punctuates.
>
> Yes, it has meaning. It is a kind of separator - hence it is not being
> removed, it is being replaced. Another option would be to wrap whatever it
> is separating in <section> or <div> elements.
>
It seems to me that <hr />'s role would be better filled with an entity
like &rule; instead. Entities are characters within the text, which hold
no special meaning; separation of logical sections of the document is
better handled by containers (<div>, <section> et al) than by separators.
Cheers
Owen
Dominik Boecker
[On <b> and <strong>]
> Meanings are useless if they mean the same thing, or suggest the same
> idea. But don't let me fool you! Try it out on your own. <b>This
> appears bolded.</b> and <strong>This appears bolded, too!</strong>
So where's the point?
Extra Service for you: <b> means nothing. <strong> means strong
emphasis.
The rendering might be the same, but the meaning is totally different.
> Why is it that if I want to quote
> from a newspaper, I'd have to use <i>?
What meaning does <i> have? Answer: none. So why should one use <i> to
markup a quote?
<blockquote cite="URI for source document or msg"> and <q cite="URI for
source document or msg"> or <cite> do exist in the real world (though i
doubt you know tose elements). Look them up in the spec and select the
appropriate element to markup the quote.
Keith Bowes
>>The color of strawberries is red.
>
>
> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
>
And how about genetic manipulation?
Keith Bowes
>
> The color of strawberries is red. Why is there a need for two tags
> that do the same, when you can have more of a general <b>? Ummmm...
> NO! If you make <strong> not bold, it looses its meaning since anyone
> with a visual browser will see plain red text. How could someone that
> if something was <strong> if it wasnt bolded?
>
Strong means "strongly emphasized." As long as that was construed to
the reader, it wouldn't matter if it were bold or not.
andkonDOTcom
Would you be against the use of <hr/> between properly divided sections of a page?
non-english speaker
> color of strawberries" are different. But in the modern CSS world,
> logical elements do make more sense. You can make <strong> a red,
> non-bold font (and it would retain its meaning). But if you do that for
> <b>, it wouldn't be bold and would have no meaning.
If I understood this english word correctly (thought I've been making
mistakes all the way), <b> is for *bold* and it means "clear and distinct to
the eye; conspicuous". So bold doesn't have to be bold like *bold*, it is
logical itself. Creating a new tag for bold seems a little bit too bold.
You can say:
<style>bold {font-weight: normal; color: red} </style>
And it is still "clear and distinct to the eye; conspicuous".
And, don't forget these color-blind people.
non-english speaker
"Dominik Boecker" <ungelesen...@dominik-boecker.de> wrote in message
news:1foa5ec.1rm...@ID-42033.user.dfncis.de...
> Extra Service for you: <b> means nothing. <strong> means strong
> emphasis.
I think we can end the discussion on <b> and <strong>. I admit the two are
<b>slightly</b> different. On the other hand, <i> and <em> have more
differences. I said there are at least 4 languages I know don't use italic
style at all. Even in English <i> means both citing and emphasis. My initial
opinion is "we are separating logical from presentation too much." on this
point the <q> should be criticized more.
I said in a former post that if we are really trying to benefit from
seperating logic from presentation, we should consider carefully how the
logical tags should present. HTML has long history, and so far Chinese
webpages refuses to use neither <i> nor <em>. They don't have italic style,
so they don't use <i>. But they do have emphasis, and they refuse to use
<em>, because their emphasis, instead of being oblique, is to add a single
dot below each emphasised ideograph, and it is not possible till now, and
every <em> is still oblique on every browser. If this goes on, I don't
really see the difference between <em> and <i>.
> (though i doubt you know tose elements).
Won't you never try to be polite or a correct speller?
andkonDOTcom
Sure, we can argue about made up definitions. The fact is that all
major browser (IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera) display <strong> as <b>.
The same way. Just like when your print something out and some words
are bolded, they tend to be more important. So how could you tell the
difference between <strong> and <b> without looking at the code? You
can't. People rely on the connotation of "fat letters" that that info
is more important. And besides what's the point of having <strong> and
<em> when we do not have <shout> <sarcasm> or any other logical tags?
And with <strong> and <em> how do you decide to use them? Gee, this
info needs is with emphasis and that's strong...
WONDERFUL EXPERIMENT! Insert the following code into a webpage and see
for yourself! <b>this is bold and forever will be</b> and <strong>this
is also bold and forever will be</b>
You see, you can say that you can specify with CSS that <strong> won't
be bold. But then how will people know it's not <strong>?
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>
> > The color of strawberries is red.
>
> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
That's not the point. The point is clearly how can you tell the
difference between <b> and <strong> without looking at the code? You
simply can't.
The only thing logical tags do is imitate what most people already
accept. That's why <newspapercite> would be in italics and why
<strong> is bolded because important stuff IS bolded.
Sidenote: <q> then is actually useless as not putting "" around actual
quotes is incorrect grammar. And since everyone knows "" are quotes
(no wonder they are called quotes), <q> or <quote> is useless all the
more.
andkonDOTcom
Yes, but <b> is more than not going to be contrued by the reader as
"strongly emphasized."
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom <andra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> [On <b> and <strong>]
>
> > Meanings are useless if they mean the same thing, or suggest the same
> > idea. But don't let me fool you! Try it out on your own. <b>This
> > appears bolded.</b> and <strong>This appears bolded, too!</strong>
>
> So where's the point?
>
I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly emphasized.
Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using more bolding
that strong), it looses its meaning. Unless it looks like the meaning,
there's not much point.
> Extra Service for you: <b> means nothing. <strong> means strong
> emphasis.
>
<b> means bold. Bolding of words or text in usually understood to mean
important. If you print out a paper with bolded words, one will know
that those words stand out and are perhaps more important than others
(keywords, key ideas, key phrases)
Let's say I have two webpages. They are alike except one uses <b> and
the other uses <strong>. If I print them out, does the <b> one lose
all its meaning since "it has no meaning"? That would be ridiculous.
The universal meaning of <b> is understood. There is no reason to
create <em> and <strong> and the rest of the logical tags if we have
generic and universal meanings for the four simple tags (i, b, u, tt)
> The rendering might be the same, but the meaning is totally different.
Unless one knows it is strong, there IS NO meaning. Unless it is
displayed to look strong (bolded), it does not mean strong as it would
plain text otherwise.
> > Why is it that if I want to quote
> > from a newspaper, I'd have to use <i>?
>
> What meaning does <i> have? Answer: none. So why should one use <i> to
> markup a quote?
>
(Sorry, I meant cite a newspaper as bibliography NOT a cite a quote
from a newspaper.) <i> like <b> has many implied meanings. It is
usually accepted that when you mention a newspaper you make the name
italicized. So why doesn't HTML have a <newspaper> tag? That would be
logical as opposed to the "evil" <i>. The other meanings of <i>
include emphasis (some people use bolded some use italics), foreign
words/phrases, etc. Why dont we have a <foreign> in HTML to display
latin phrases or such? This goes to show that there are accepted uses
of italics (and bolding for that matter).
> <blockquote cite="URI for source document or msg"> and <q cite="URI for
> source document or msg"> or <cite> do exist in the real world (though i
> doubt you know tose elements). Look them up in the spec and select the
> appropriate element to markup the quote.
>
Yes, but if we have these logical tags and attributes we should have
one for other situations where logical tags might come into play.
<scientific>, <newspaper>, <foreign, etc... Instead of those we
usually use <i> because it is understood to use italics in those
situations.
Chip C
> ungelesen...@dominik-boecker.de (Dominik Boecker) wrote in message news:<1fo8lrm.1c1...@ID-42033.user.dfncis.de>...
> > andkonDOTcom <andra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > And what's the point of having <strong> and <em> when <b> and <i> do
> > > the same?
> >
> > They don't "do" the same. :-)
> >
> > They have *different meanings*. Plain and simple. So easy is HTML...
>
> Meanings are useless if they mean the same thing, or suggest the same
> idea. But don't let me fool you! Try it out on your own. <b>This
> appears bolded.</b> and <strong>This appears bolded, too!</strong>
>
> Now you could start arguing that a person could specify on their user
> stylesheet this and that. However, <b> and what <b> does is widly
> accepted as a sort of "making the affected words more important"
> pretty much the same way you try to sell <strong>. There is no
> difference between the two.
>
Yes there is a difference. <b> does not indicate a word is *more
important*, it merely indicates that the presentation of the text
should be bold. On the other hand <strong> indicates that the word
carries more weight, and may not be rendered as bold text in all UAs.
Use <strong> and <b> in Netscape 4 at some font sizes and you will
see this, though I consider it a bug rather than proof. Of course
you won't believe what I am telling you, so please examine a search
engine like Thunderstone/Texis or even Google and you will see how
these tags are treated differently.
--
Chip C
Personal site: http://www.chipcom.net/
Christmas Stories: http://www.christmas-stories.com/
Isofarro
> Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<8s87va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>>
>> > The color of strawberries is red.
>>
>> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
>
> That's not the point.
It is _clearly_ the point. An abstract reference to colour as in the colour
of strawberries _doesn't_ mean it is always going to be a direct colour
reference such as red.
Isofarro
> I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly emphasized.
> Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using more bolding
> that strong), it looses its meaning.
It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where the
meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have consciously made -
and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
andkonDOTcom
> On 4 Jan 2003 09:53:35 -0800, andkonDOTcom allegedly wrote...
>
> > ungelesen...@dominik-boecker.de (Dominik Boecker) wrote in message news:<1fo8lrm.1c1...@ID-42033.user.dfncis.de>...
> > > andkonDOTcom <andra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > And what's the point of having <strong> and <em> when <b> and <i> do
> > > > the same?
> > >
> > > They don't "do" the same. :-)
> > >
> > > They have *different meanings*. Plain and simple. So easy is HTML...
> >
> > Meanings are useless if they mean the same thing, or suggest the same
> > idea. But don't let me fool you! Try it out on your own. <b>This
> > appears bolded.</b> and <strong>This appears bolded, too!</strong>
> >
> > Now you could start arguing that a person could specify on their user
> > stylesheet this and that. However, <b> and what <b> does is widly
> > accepted as a sort of "making the affected words more important"
> > pretty much the same way you try to sell <strong>. There is no
> > difference between the two.
> >
>
> Yes there is a difference. <b> does not indicate a word is *more
> important*, it merely indicates that the presentation of the text
Okay, here is my dandy experiment. Have one webpage with <b> and the
other with <strong>... You cannot tell the two apart. And as long as
people associate bolding with more important (that's the reason why
<strong> is most usually rendered bold after all), you can use <b> to
signify important words, phrases, etc.
> should be bold. On the other hand <strong> indicates that the word
> carries more weight, and may not be rendered as bold text in all UAs.
All the major browsers (Mozilla, IE, Opera, Netscape) render it as
<b>.
> Use <strong> and <b> in Netscape 4 at some font sizes and you will
> see this, though I consider it a bug rather than proof. Of course
Well, it is a bug since it doesnt work consistenly.
> you won't believe what I am telling you, so please examine a search
> engine like Thunderstone/Texis or even Google and you will see how
> these tags are treated differently.
Perhaps a URL with explanation since I highly doubt google uses
<strong> for any rankings, as people surely would have caught on and
started spamming by <strong>many many many keywords</strong>
Andrew McFarland
wrote:
>That's not the point. The point is clearly how can you tell the
>difference between <b> and <strong> without looking at the code? You
>simply can't.
Think of yourself as a browser. All you do is look at code. The
browser can tell the difference, and it can make the difference clear
to the user if requested.
Andrew
Andrew McFarland
wrote:
><b> means bold. Bolding of words or text in usually understood to mean
>important.
Bold usually means important. But it doesn't always mean important.
That is why <b> and <strong> are different. <strong> _always has the
same meaning.
<snip/>
>(Sorry, I meant cite a newspaper as bibliography NOT a cite a quote
>from a newspaper.) <i> like <b> has many implied meanings.
You agree that <b> has many meanings. The key advantage of <strong> is
that it has only one.
> So why doesn't HTML have a <newspaper> tag?
HTML is a lightweight markup language. The more element types a markup
language has, the more a document can contain. HTML is nowhere near as
complex as, say, DocBook, but it has much more structure than a flat
ASCII file. HTML has enough detail to make _most_ possible pages have
a clear structure, but not so much that common tools can't handle it.
HTML is totally unsuitable for the long term storage of documents
though - precisely because it has so few element types. In an ideal
world, documents would be stored as some form of DocBook and then
transformed into other formats as required - by DSSSL, XSLT, or
whatever takes your fancy.
Andrew
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>
> > I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly emphasized.
> > Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using more bolding
> > that strong), it looses its meaning.
>
> It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where the
> meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have consciously made -
> and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
The point is that if logical tags don't represent what they are
"supposed" to then they are meaningless. The reason we have <strong>
usually bolded is because that IS the accepted visual meaning of
strong. People's meanings of the four basic tags (b, u, tt, and i) are
enough because each of those (possibly with the exception of u) has
distinct meanings that are generally understood or can be applied. If
I cite a newpaper as my source, I use <i>. If I want to discuss homo
sapiens, I use <i>. For a foreign phrase (such as coup d'etat) I use
<i>. If I want something to "jump" out at the reader, I use <b> (such
as: Can you believe <b>that</b?). If i want to emphasize a sentence in
my paragraph, I use <b> once again. If I want to represent HTML code,
i use <tt> because it is monospaced and looks "like" code. If I want
to cut and paste an instant message, I might also use <tt> since it
has something to do with the computer and would be generally
understood as such.
Besides, there aren't enough logical tags. How about a newspaper tag?
Scientific classification? Instant messages? Etc...
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>
> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> > news:<8s87va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >>
> >> > The color of strawberries is red.
> >>
> >> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
> >
> > That's not the point.
>
> It is _clearly_ the point. An abstract reference to colour as in the colour
> of strawberries _doesn't_ mean it is always going to be a direct colour
> reference such as red.
Bold is always understood to be "important"... I do not think anyone
who read a bolded phrase on the Internet was ever confused that it
wasn't in <strong>. And what about the world before HTML? Did they not
have bolded words before to signify importance? Did they not quote
with "" ?
It is easier to have four abstract meanings (b, u, tt, i) that can
take the meaning of everything logical than to have the incomplete set
of logical tags today or the massive army of logical tags that are
needed to complete it.
Isofarro
> Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<mq69va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>>
>> > I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly emphasized.
>> > Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using more bolding
>> > that strong), it looses its meaning.
>>
>> It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where the
>> meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have consciously made
>> - and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
>
> The point is that if logical tags don't represent
They do represent - you limit yourself to a mere visual rendering.
Isofarro
> Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<al69va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>>
>> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
>> > news:<8s87va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > The color of strawberries is red.
>> >>
>> >> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
>> >
>> > That's not the point.
>>
>> It is _clearly_ the point. An abstract reference to colour as in the
>> colour of strawberries _doesn't_ mean it is always going to be a direct
>> colour reference such as red.
>
> Bold is always understood to be "important"
Red is Red. The colour of strawberries sometimes is red, sometimes it isn't
Andrew McFarland
wrote:
>Bold is always understood to be "important"...
No it isn't. You - or someone very like you - said
><b> means bold. Bolding of words or text in usually understood to mean
>important.
See <fda8b19c.03010...@posting.google.com>, posted on 4 Jan
2003 19:52:35 -0800.
Which do you think is true: "Bold is always important" or "Bold is
usually important"?
Andrew
Jukka K. Korpela
> For instance, The standard character used by most English speakers is
> also used as the character for inches (").
No, the English language uses a pair of asymmetric quotation marks for
quotations, either double or single quotation marks, depending on
nesting of quotation and language variant (such as British vs.
American). The character for the obsolete inch unit is DOUBLE PRIME.
None of these characters is the Ascii quotation mark, ".
The Ascii " was invented when computer resources were _very_ expensive
and a bit cost a fortune. It was meant to be used as a double quotation
mark, both left and right, as well an inch symbol, and even (in
conjunction with overprinting) as diaeresis. Of course, the "neutral"
Ascii quotation mark has the essential property of a compromise: it is
_good_ for nothing, but it's just _tolerable_ for everything it was
meant for. Good typography was a luxury that people just couldn't
afford. Besides, computers were mainly used for computing and by
specialists only. Before criticizing the people who made those
decisions, we should ask: would we rather have lived without _any_
quotation marks for a few decennia?
I think we _still_ live in a world where the Ascii quotation mark has
to be used for a multitude of purposes, and it's still the most
reliable way to indicate something as quoted text in HTML documents,
too. But let's not confuse this surrogate method with the orthographic
and typographic rules of English, or other languages.
> The markup isn't meant to replace characters, it is meant to encode
> meaning.
Characters have meanings. Not just the characters used in markup, but
also the characters in document content. The "+" character in "2+2"
means addition, and the character "2" designates a natural number.
Similarly, punctuation characters have meanings. The meanings are
language-dependent, though often languages share the same conventions,
e.g. the convention that a full stop "." ends a normal sentence.
The idea of using <q> in order to generate language-dependent
punctuation characters is wrong. Instead of using language information
and <q> markup to produce correct punctuation characters, it would make
more sense to just _use_ the right punctuation characters. If one wants
to recognize quotations from a text by automatic means, then the
language information could be used to decide what punctuation is to be
recognized. Quotation marks are markup in a sense; punctuation in
general is traditional markup used in written languages. Why should a
markup notation like HTML reinvent the wheel here?
> Yes. <hr /> == "horizontal rule". This is a graphical
> description.
The specifications are confused, starting from HTML 2.0, which says
"The <HR> element is a divider between sections of text;
typically a full width horizontal rule or equivalent graphic."
Pretty structural, isn't it? It defines the meaning in logical terms,
then mentions, en passant, a typical visual rendering. But it's under
the heading "5.9. Horizontal Rule: HR", and it's named HR.
(The pessimist's law for markup: Any definition of markup that can be
interpreted either structurally or physically will be interpreted
physically. This may result in retrofitted definitions in the future.)
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html
Jukka K. Korpela
> If I understood this english word correctly (thought I've been
> making mistakes all the way), <b> is for *bold* and it means "clear
> and distinct to the eye; conspicuous"
In the HTML context, in the definition of <b> markup, "bold" means
'boldface', which in turn means 'heavy-faced type', or a type where the
lines that constitute characters are heavy, thick. In CSS terms, it
means font-weight that is larger than the normal weight.
Cf. to http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?bold
and http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?boldface
Thus, the correct method to handle <b> in non-visual presentation (or
any presentation where bolding is impossible) would be to ignore the
markup _or_ to present the content in a manner that clearly indicates
that it means bold face. For example, a browser could display <b>
content in red, but only if it tells the user that red color is really
a simulation of bolding (and if it does create any possibility of
confusing this with other uses of red color).
On the practical side, some user agents effectively treat <b> as
meaning <strong>, and it's difficult to criticize this, given the fact
that in the great majority of cases where authors write <b>, they
really _mean_ <strong>.
Jukka K. Korpela
> I said in a former post that if we are really trying to benefit
> from seperating logic from presentation, we should consider
> carefully how the logical tags should present.
Indeed. There's too much coupling of logical markup with implied
physical presentation; physical markup in disguise, so to say.
> HTML has long
> history, and so far Chinese webpages refuses to use neither <i> nor
> <em>. They don't have italic style, so they don't use <i>. But they
> do have emphasis, and they refuse to use <em>, because their
> emphasis, instead of being oblique, is to add a single dot below
> each emphasised ideograph, and it is not possible till now, and
> every <em> is still oblique on every browser.
Actually, <em> is not always oblique. Consider Lynx, or consider a
speech browser, or consider a graphic browser customized (with a user
style sheet) to do something else.
But it's surely oblique or italics in the vast majority of cases,
making it clear enough that you encounter problems when a writing
system does not use such conventions for emphasis. The problem is in
browsers, not in HTML, though admittedly HTML specifications seem to
take this issue lightly. They describe italics as typical rather than
mandatory rendering, but it seems to be that the implied variation
would be related to matters of taste or personal presentational style
rather than mandatory cultural dependencies.
Chip C
> Perhaps a URL with explanation since I highly doubt google uses
> <strong> for any rankings, as people surely would have caught on and
> started spamming by <strong>many many many keywords</strong>
>
You will not find a URL with an explanation, though you can do as
other professionals do and take the time to install and reverse-
engineer the technology to see what makes it work.
http://www.thunderstone.com/
http://www.google.com/
http://www.inktomi.com/
Indeed, if you were not so lazy, you could easily find references on
the web explaining the difference between <strong> and <b>
http://www.think-ink.net/html/bold.htm
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/phrase/strong.html
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/font/b.html
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags6.htm
Jukka K. Korpela
> I know a very important concept of modern html is to separate
> presentation from document logic. It's a good idea, but I wonder
> how much should "logic" be separated from "presentation".
To a much higher degree than most people think.
> Logic and
> presentation are the same thing for more than 3000 years (before
> printers), and during the time we invented so many ways of
> presentation that *has* logic meaning. Punctuate for example, and
> empty line, text indent are other examples. These "presentation"s
> does have meanings.
No, the presentations _carry_ meanings, or _express_ them. And they do
that differently in different writing systems, in different languages,
and in different usages. In some cases, the presentation consists of
special characters, such a punctuation marks, and such thing can be
handled at character level. But being a heading, for example, is
something that really calls for markup. There is no general convention
on indicating some text as a heading by the use of characters. (For
example, using CAPS ONLY is far from certain indication.)
> The "Q" tag (in HTML4) is a good example that we are trying to
> solve a problem we never meet.
On this I agree, but basically because written languages already have
their "markup" for quotations. If "Q" had been part of HTML from the
very beginning, it might be different.
> If we want pure logic separated from presentation, that's possible.
> After a few years this can be achieved, if we really want it
> happen. So the HTML in the year 2010 would possibly be:
> <sentence>
> <subject>
> <pronoun personal="first">I</pronoun>
Unfortunately, no. My current estimate is that no earlier than around
2035, the original idea of HTML markup will be reinvented and
clarified, giving rise to universal semantically significant markup.
(By semantics, I mean meaning, not all the talk about "semantic Web",
which is actually about _syntactically_ structured documents - a good
thing too.)
To continue a bit, this will include the idea of varying granularity of
markup, ranging from very simple markup that indicates very major
structures (headings, paragraphs, list, etc.) only to fine-tuned markup
even down to the level of using markup for each word, or even each
character. Naturally, the fine-tuned markup would mostly be generated
programmatically. And authors could write or generate it if they think
there will be enough use for it. For example, if you want to make sure
that an automatic translation system can handle your document well, you
probably need to add some rather detailed markup to it, at least in
difficult parts.
Chuck Taylor
wrote:
>The reason we have <strong>
>usually bolded is because that IS the accepted visual meaning of
>strong.
It is *an* accepted typographic convention. The nice thing about the
STRONG element is that its appearance can be adapted to different
visual environments while still indicating the same thing.
And as you alluded to by stipulating "visual meaning" in your sentence
above, displaying text on a screen isn't the only application of HTML
on the Web.
> People's meanings of the four basic tags (b, u, tt, and i) are
>enough because each of those (possibly with the exception of u) has
>distinct meanings that are generally understood or can be applied. If
>I cite a newpaper as my source, I use <i>. If I want to discuss homo
>sapiens, I use <i>. For a foreign phrase (such as coup d'etat) I use
><i>.
As Andrew McFarland observed, you clearly understand that one
typographic device can have multiple meanings.
And if I want an automated tool to be able to tell the difference
between newspaper citations and foreign-language phrases, how do you
suggest I tell it to know the difference between the I element, the I
element, and the I element?
How shall I tell a tool to tell the difference between "strongly
emphasized" text inside a B element and a photo caption also inside a
B element?
Go ahead, Tutorial Boy. Tell me no such tools exist. Tell me there's
no reason why anyone would ever want one. I always love to see
someone say "I'm not aware of it, therefore it doesn't exist."
>Besides, there aren't enough logical tags. How about a newspaper tag?
>Scientific classification? Instant messages? Etc...
*chuckle* There isn't a logical tag for every situation, so we should
use none of them, eh?
--
Chuck Taylor
http://home.hiwaay.net/~taylorc/contact/
Chuck Taylor
wrote:
>All the major browsers (Mozilla, IE, Opera, Netscape) render it as
><b>.
Whoopee! Do you really think that four major browsers constitute the
whole of the World Wide Web?
Alan J. Flavell
> I said in a former post that if we are really trying to benefit from
> seperating logic from presentation,
Whatever you may think about that issue - the WWW is going to separate
the content from the presentation anyway, so it's not a bad idea to
work _with_ the strengths of the medium, rather than trying to defeat
them...
> we should consider carefully how the logical tags should present.
Making that happen is the job of browser designers (and of course
those who write stylesheets to exploit the available browsers
features).
Sure, one should be aware of typical presentation, but not to the
extent of perverting the markup.
> HTML has long history, and so far Chinese
> webpages refuses to use neither <i> nor <em>. They don't have italic style,
> so they don't use <i>.
I don't see anything to argue with there. <i> is a bit of a problem
child anyway.
> But they do have emphasis, and they refuse to use
> <em>, because their emphasis, instead of being oblique, is to add a single
> dot below each emphasised ideograph,
This issue has been raised recently, hasn't it?
> and it is not possible till now,
Do you _really_ rate that as a shortcoming of HTML? I'd rate it as a
benefit, because _all_ of the <em>-marked content will be presented
correctly as soon as browsers introduce the desired presentation
(China is hardly short of capable browser implementers?).
> every <em> is still oblique on every browser.
Not on a typical Lynx rendering, it isn't. Nor on speaking browsers,
etc.
> If this goes on, I don't
> really see the difference between <em> and <i>.
When properly used in HTML, <i> cannot mean "emphasis". Because if it
meant emphasis, the proper markup would be <em>, not <i>.
good luck
--
"DO NOT READ WHILST THE BOX IS OPEN!" - warning
printed on the underside of a product package. (honestly!)
Jim Dabell
> Jim Dabell <jim-u...@jimdabell.com> wrote:
>
>> For instance, The standard character used by most English speakers is
>> also used as the character for inches (").
>
> No, the English language uses a pair of asymmetric quotation marks for
> quotations, either double or single quotation marks, depending on
> nesting of quotation and language variant (such as British vs.
> American). The character for the obsolete inch unit is DOUBLE PRIME.
> None of these characters is the Ascii quotation mark, ".
[snip]
As always, leave it to Jukka to teach us native English speakers a thing or
two about our own language :)
I had a feeling that there was a little I was skipping, however it wasn't my
intention to claim that this was the most accurate character to use -
merely that is what everybody uses in practice.
> I think we _still_ live in a world where the Ascii quotation mark has
> to be used for a multitude of purposes, and it's still the most
> reliable way to indicate something as quoted text in HTML documents,
> too. But let's not confuse this surrogate method with the orthographic
> and typographic rules of English, or other languages.
So we agree.
Are there any authoring tools that make it easy to use the proper
characters? I only know of ms word's "smart quotes" feature, which seems
to universally mess things up, although I have to admit I haven't studied
this area in detail.
>> The markup isn't meant to replace characters, it is meant to encode
>> meaning.
>
> Characters have meanings. Not just the characters used in markup, but
> also the characters in document content. The "+" character in "2+2"
> means addition, and the character "2" designates a natural number.
Unfortunately, getting at that meaning is rarely as simple as parsing html.
> Similarly, punctuation characters have meanings. The meanings are
> language-dependent, though often languages share the same conventions,
> e.g. the convention that a full stop "." ends a normal sentence.
It's interesting you should use that example, given the recent thread on
www-style about parsing for end-of-sentences:
<URL:http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2002Dec/0065.html>
The arguments don't apply to properly encoded quotation marks, however.
> The idea of using <q> in order to generate language-dependent
> punctuation characters is wrong. Instead of using language information
> and <q> markup to produce correct punctuation characters, it would make
> more sense to just _use_ the right punctuation characters. If one wants
> to recognize quotations from a text by automatic means, then the
> language information could be used to decide what punctuation is to be
> recognized. Quotation marks are markup in a sense; punctuation in
> general is traditional markup used in written languages. Why should a
> markup notation like HTML reinvent the wheel here?
That's an interesting take on it, but I think this is academic at the
moment. Will authoring tools ever be clever enough to insert the right
characters (or will keyboards ever have appropriate keys on them)?
Somehow, I doubt that most authors will be memorising the unicode
references to the correct characters any time soon, when <q> is easy enough
to remember and fits in with the rest of the document markup.
I can't think of any other instance where characters are used as markup, so
there are also consistency questions raised (not to mention implementing it
instead of just using a normal html parser). Or perhaps I'm merely
ignorant and there are plenty of examples - any ideas?
>> Yes. <hr /> == "horizontal rule". This is a graphical
>> description.
>
> The specifications are confused, starting from HTML 2.0, which says
> "The <HR> element is a divider between sections of text;
> typically a full width horizontal rule or equivalent graphic."
> Pretty structural, isn't it? It defines the meaning in logical terms,
> then mentions, en passant, a typical visual rendering. But it's under
> the heading "5.9. Horizontal Rule: HR", and it's named HR.
So this would be a non-issue had it been named <sep> or similar in the first
place.
> (The pessimist's law for markup: Any definition of markup that can be
> interpreted either structurally or physically will be interpreted
> physically. This may result in retrofitted definitions in the future.)
I believe Karl has a lot to say about you revisionists :)
--
Jim Dabell
Jerry Muelver
> Okay, here is my dandy experiment. Have one webpage with <b> and the
> other with <strong>... You cannot tell the two apart. And as long as
> people associate bolding with more important (that's the reason why
> <strong> is most usually rendered bold after all), you can use <b> to
> signify important words, phrases, etc.
>
We await your forordained HTML tutorial with bated breath and
ever-lowered expectations.
---- jerry
Jim Dabell
> Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<mq69va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>>
>> > I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly emphasized.
>> > Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using more bolding
>> > that strong), it looses its meaning.
>>
>> It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where the
>> meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have consciously made
>> - and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
>
> The point is that if logical tags don't represent what they are
> "supposed" to then they are meaningless.
Thank you. That is the first sane thing you have posted here, I believe.
THAT is why everybody here is trying to explain - that it's useless to use
<b> when you mean <strong> and vice versa. Misuse of elements is why
people who want to do useful stuff with a set of web pages must restrict
themselves to the subset of documents created by authors who have a clue.
Clueless authors *reduce* the utility of html (to the point where people
get confused between <b> and <strong> elements, apparently).
> The reason we have <strong>
> usually bolded is because that IS the accepted visual meaning of
> strong.
That is correct in many cases (for some languages, I don't claim to be
familiar with many at all). This is called a useful user-agent stylesheet
- presenting documents in an easily understandable manner.
> People's meanings of the four basic tags (b, u, tt, and i) are
> enough because each of those (possibly with the exception of u) has
> distinct meanings that are generally understood or can be applied.
Understood by who? Perhaps *you* can use context to instantly decide that a
certain part of the document that is in italics is actually a quote, but
how is a computer to know that it isn't just something the author decided
to give emphasis?
Computers are there to do work _for_ us - if we don't lie about the meaning
of documents, they'll be able to do a much better job with them. Unless
you have compelling evidence that natural language parsing is just around
the corner?
> If
> I cite a newpaper as my source, I use <i>. If I want to discuss homo
> sapiens, I use <i>. For a foreign phrase (such as coup d'etat) I use
> <i>.
And that is precisely the problem. You are treating html as a graphic
design tool when it clearly isn't. You may be able to get the basic look
you are after in many browsers, with the default settings, but you aren't
encoding your html properly at all, which leads to problems whenever your
assumption of mainstream browser + default settings falls down.
[snip]
> Besides, there aren't enough logical tags. How about a newspaper tag?
You mean the <blockquote> element? Or an actual <newspaper> element that
contains the name of a newspaper? It's hard to comment without you being
more specific.
> Scientific classification? Instant messages? Etc...
Propose them to www-html if you think there is a widespread need for them.
--
Jim Dabell
Jim Dabell
> Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<8s87va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>>
>> > The color of strawberries is red.
>>
>> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
>
> That's not the point. The point is clearly how can you tell the
> difference between <b> and <strong> without looking at the code? You
> simply can't.
Yes, you can, if you prefer <strong> to be bright red or flashing, or
whatever, it's trivial to set up many browsers to do this.
That's not the point though. It doesn't matter if you can't tell the
difference by looking at it in your particular user-agent. html goes
beyond simple looks, as everybody has pointed out multiple times. On a set
of documents discussing certain species of spider, for example (where the
latin name of the species is traditionally italicised, I believe), it would
be dead simple to generate a list of species mentioned. If the authors
misused <i> when they meant <em>, this would make it an extremely annoying
task.
If you don't believe this to be the case, then surely <b class="heading">
with an appropriate stylesheet rule is as useful as a <h1> element? Hint:
it isn't.
> The only thing logical tags do is imitate what most people already
> accept. That's why <newspapercite> would be in italics and why
> <strong> is bolded because important stuff IS bolded.
[snip]
That is called a useful user-agent stylesheet. The fact that the default
renderings for some elements are the same does not remove the need for
meaningful markup.
--
Jim Dabell
Zhang Weiwu (familyname first)
"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.40.03010...@lxplus066.cern.ch...
> Whatever you may think about that issue - the WWW is going to separate
> the content from the presentation anyway, so it's not a bad idea to
> work _with_ the strengths of the medium, rather than trying to defeat
> them...
I am the non-english speaker:)
Hey, I am not standing against you on this point. Now I admit I used a wrong
subject for the first message. I used "has html gone too far?" while
actually I am talking about a draft, and what I really want to say is "would
html go too far?"
I said separating logic from presentation is a good thing (in the first post
in this thread). What do I mean is we shouldn't separate them too much,
because presentation is some sort of logic itself. My idea is clear on the
last two example I made in my very first post on this thread. Okay, I am not
a clear English speaker.
And I stand against <Q>, because it wish to replace a punctuation mark,
which is part of language and HTML should never touch it (as long as it is
_Hypertext_ML. I don't mind if there will be a MindML in future wants
punctuations go away.)
On the <HR> issue, I cannot agree with Jukka K. Korpela more on his message
news:Xns92FAF3A62C1D...@193.229.0.31
If I have that good English I would have said similar thing as in the last
part of that post:
andkonDOTcom
Good catch! Now does that actually matter? Does that change anything
or than nothing?
Does that change the fact that the only way we can tell that something
is <strong> is by its bolding? Accepted to be important (all the time
or almost all the time it doesn't matter), <b> can be used as <strong>
since the very bolding you all say is meaningless is the same bolding
that signifies meaning of importance into <strong>. Unless a
universally accepted indicator (such as bold) is used for logical
tags, they lose their meanings. We could have <strong> as purple
underlined crap, but would people understand? NO! The very existence
of logical tags is due to the fact that there are three or four
universally accepted tags (b, u, tt, i).
Logical tags are useless as they reaffirm (incompletely) what we
already accept.
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>
> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> > news:<al69va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >>
> >> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> >> > news:<8s87va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
> >> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> > The color of strawberries is red.
> >> >>
> >> >> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
> >> >
> >> > That's not the point.
> >>
> >> It is _clearly_ the point. An abstract reference to colour as in the
> >> colour of strawberries _doesn't_ mean it is always going to be a direct
> >> colour reference such as red.
> >
> > Bold is always understood to be "important"
>
> Red is Red. The colour of strawberries sometimes is red, sometimes it isn't
You are right. However I am not fooled by your "water is wet therefore
anything I say is right." The fact is that <strong> exists and is
understood because it is bold. If it was displayed as green polka
dotted borders then people would get confused. And dont blame this on
the browser makers either. They know that people understand bold to
mean important, so that's why they use bolding in <strong>.
andkonDOTcom
But I'm not a browser. I am a person who sees bolding whether it is
<b> or <strong>. As long as people think of importance associated with
bolded words, <strong> is useless. It reaffirms what we already
accept. If tomorrow blinking red text was meant to be important,
<strong> would probably change along in a few years.
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>
> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> > news:<mq69va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >>
> >> > I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly emphasized.
> >> > Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using more bolding
> >> > that strong), it looses its meaning.
> >>
> >> It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where the
> >> meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have consciously made
> >> - and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
> >
> > The point is that if logical tags don't represent
>
> They do represent - you limit yourself to a mere visual rendering.
You mean to invoke an aural browser conversation? That simply web 2000
talker thingy that i was given a while back was simply crap. It was
harder to use than a regular browser and it cut up the sentences,
which were painfully hard to understand. If it's harder for me to use,
what about someone who is actually dependent on it, such as the blind?
I especially liked its voice. Click on the Stop button and hear
"s-an-top buton" or such.
As long as there isnt an aural browser that is easier to use than a
regular browser (since i would assume there is no real point to an
aural browser only the nonblind can use), HTML is strictly (how an
ironicly nice adverb) a visual language. We can fantasize about blind
people this and accessibility that, but the only thing we can do with
HTML at the end of the day is stare at web pages on a computer in a
browser. You can utilize HTML in PDA's and cellphones to a limited
amount, but that's it. Oh yeah, you can print a web page out, but
that's still is visual. Perhaps if people were less future-visionary
and just tried to improve what we have to work with now instead of
looking into fantasies, the web would be a somehow better I guess.
andkonDOTcom
> On 5 Jan 2003 13:02:18 -0800, andra...@hotmail.com (andkonDOTcom)
> wrote:
>
> >The reason we have <strong>
> >usually bolded is because that IS the accepted visual meaning of
> >strong.
>
>
> It is *an* accepted typographic convention. The nice thing about the
> STRONG element is that its appearance can be adapted to different
> visual environments while still indicating the same thing.
>
And with <b> we couldn't do this because? People accept it to mean
important as of now anways... Think of all the time we would save
without having to decide between <q> and "" and <em> and <strong> if
we only use the four tags (b, u, tt,i).
> And as you alluded to by stipulating "visual meaning" in your sentence
> above, displaying text on a screen isn't the only application of HTML
> on the Web.
>
Well for my aural browser argument, search around for a recent (5
minutes before this one) post of mine. I can't really think of any
other non-visual implications of HTML.
>
> > People's meanings of the four basic tags (b, u, tt, and i) are
> >enough because each of those (possibly with the exception of u) has
> >distinct meanings that are generally understood or can be applied. If
> >I cite a newpaper as my source, I use <i>. If I want to discuss homo
> >sapiens, I use <i>. For a foreign phrase (such as coup d'etat) I use
> ><i>.
>
>
> As Andrew McFarland observed, you clearly understand that one
> typographic device can have multiple meanings.
Yes, <i>
>
> And if I want an automated tool to be able to tell the difference
> between newspaper citations and foreign-language phrases, how do you
> suggest I tell it to know the difference between the I element, the I
> element, and the I element?
>
Well it doesnt matter, since there is no newspaper tag and such. There
are no implications of logical tags that the four tags could not
easily replace without any problems. In fact, more people I would bet
use <b> to imply important than <strong>.
> How shall I tell a tool to tell the difference between "strongly
> emphasized" text inside a B element and a photo caption also inside a
> B element?
>
There is no tool that would be worth all the trouble of having
<newspaper> and all the rest of the complete (and possibly infinite)
set of logical tags.
> Go ahead, Tutorial Boy. Tell me no such tools exist. Tell me there's
> no reason why anyone would ever want one. I always love to see
> someone say "I'm not aware of it, therefore it doesn't exist."
>
The only thing I could think of is perhaps search engines, somehow.
But why would you want queries on <strong> or such? The *possible*
implications do not outweigh the chaos of having a tag for every
logical instance.
>
> >Besides, there aren't enough logical tags. How about a newspaper tag?
> >Scientific classification? Instant messages? Etc...
>
>
> *chuckle* There isn't a logical tag for every situation, so we should
> use none of them, eh?
Well see that's a problem isnt? Proper citation rules (at least in the
US) mandate that newspapers be in italics. So why isnt there a logical
tag for it? How about for foreign phrases? Why can we use <i> for
them?
Eric Jarvis
>
> Does that change the fact that the only way we can tell that something
> is <strong> is by its bolding?
>
it's not a fact...it's not true at all
we can tell that it's strong because:
it sounds louder
it is bright red
it is in italics
it is green and underlines
it is blue on a shocking pink background
and for a search engine bot...because it is marked <strong>
not only is the web NOT a purely visual medium (do we have to send
somebody round to tattoo that on your forehead?) but one can set up web
browser defaults to represent these things in a number of ways
<strong> is not inevitably bold
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"I am a man of many parts, unfortunately most of
them are no longer in stock"
Chip C
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >
> > Does that change the fact that the only way we can tell that something
> > is <strong> is by its bolding?
> >
>
> it's not a fact...it's not true at all
>
> we can tell that it's strong because:
>
> it sounds louder
> it is bright red
> it is in italics
> it is green and underlines
> it is blue on a shocking pink background
>
> and for a search engine bot...because it is marked <strong>
>
> not only is the web NOT a purely visual medium (do we have to send
> somebody round to tattoo that on your forehead?) but one can set up web
> browser defaults to represent these things in a number of ways
>
> <strong> is not inevitably bold
>
>
He just doesn't get it Eric. Maybe we should make him run around with
a blindfold and ear muffs for a bit so he might realize that there is
more to a web document than what your eyes receive from a graphical
web browser.
Chip C
> As long as there isnt an aural browser that is easier to use than a
> regular browser (since i would assume there is no real point to an
> aural browser only the nonblind can use), HTML is strictly (how an
> ironicly nice adverb) a visual language. We can fantasize about blind
> people this and accessibility that, but the only thing we can do with
> HTML at the end of the day is stare at web pages on a computer in a
> browser. You can utilize HTML in PDA's and cellphones to a limited
> amount, but that's it. Oh yeah, you can print a web page out, but
> that's still is visual. Perhaps if people were less future-visionary
> and just tried to improve what we have to work with now instead of
> looking into fantasies, the web would be a somehow better I guess.
>
Would you care to explain how so many programs I and others have
written are able to parse an HTML document and distinguish between
<b> and <strong> without the document ever being rendered visually?
As long as you consider HTML a *strictly visual language*, you will
never be able to write a decent HTML tutorial or be considered
credible in your knowledge of the subject.
Do you consider XML a *visual* language as well?
Chuck Taylor
wrote:
>Chuck Taylor <chuck.taylor@spamtrap> wrote in message news:<fvch1v4a4b8a9vlr5...@4ax.com>...
>> And as you alluded to by stipulating "visual meaning" in your sentence
>> above, displaying text on a screen isn't the only application of HTML
>> on the Web.
>Well for my aural browser argument, search around for a recent (5
>minutes before this one) post of mine. I can't really think of any
>other non-visual [applications] of HTML.
Sorry to hear that. How about considering that "browser" isn't the
only category of Web client in existence? You did manage to identify
search engines as another category, but those aren't the only two.
>> Go ahead, Tutorial Boy. Tell me no such tools exist. Tell me there's
>> no reason why anyone would ever want one. I always love to see
>> someone say "I'm not aware of it, therefore it doesn't exist."
>The only thing I could think of is perhaps search engines, somehow.
>But why would you want queries on <strong> or such? The *possible*
>implications do not outweigh the chaos of having a tag for every
>logical instance.
What makes you think a tool necessarily wants to *query* for a
specific element? Perhaps it needs to know the semantic importance of
each element as it scans an entire document. And a B element isn't
going to cut it for a tool that isn't interested in visually--or even
aurally--rendering the document.
Chip C
First you say:
>
> Well for my aural browser argument, search around for a recent (5
> minutes before this one) post of mine. I can't really think of any
> other non-visual implications of HTML.
Even though you have already been told of search engines and other
applications. Then you try to *think*:
>
> The only thing I could think of is perhaps search engines, somehow.
> But why would you want queries on <strong> or such? The *possible*
> implications do not outweigh the chaos of having a tag for every
> logical instance.
>
<strong> is already an indicator of greater relevance in some search
engines, as you have already been told but fail to comprehend.
The *proven* implications are quite useful in many applications,
thank you.
Isofarro
> Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<6n6ava...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>>
>> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
>> > news:<mq69va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly
>> >> > emphasized. Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using
>> >> > more bolding that strong), it looses its meaning.
>> >>
>> >> It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where
>> >> the meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have
>> >> consciously made - and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
>> >
>> > The point is that if logical tags don't represent
>>
>> They do represent - you limit yourself to a mere visual rendering.
>
> You mean to invoke an aural browser conversation?
It is a semantic browser not an aural browser.
[Aural browser]
> If it's harder for me to use,
> what about someone who is actually dependent on it, such as the blind?
Are you recommending that blind people should only use graphical browsers?
> but the only thing we can do with
> HTML at the end of the day is stare at web pages on a computer in a
> browser.
That's all _you_ seem capable of doing. I, on the other hand, use it for a
lot more. Like a self-learning knowledge base.
Isofarro
> Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<rp6ava...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>>
>> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
>> > news:<al69va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > Isofarro <spam...@spamdetector.co.uk> wrote in message
>> >> > news:<8s87va...@sidious.isolani.co.uk>...
>> >> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > The color of strawberries is red.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Not always. They are green before they ripen.
>> >> >
>> >> > That's not the point.
>> >>
>> >> It is _clearly_ the point. An abstract reference to colour as in the
>> >> colour of strawberries _doesn't_ mean it is always going to be a
>> >> direct colour reference such as red.
>> >
>> > Bold is always understood to be "important"
>>
>> Red is Red. The colour of strawberries sometimes is red, sometimes it
>> isn't
>
> You are right. However I am not fooled by your "water is wet therefore
> anything I say is right."
Yet you fall for "Water is wet. Oil is wet, therefore oil is water"
everytime.
Isofarro
> I can't really think of any
> other non-visual implications of HTML.
Voice over XML browsers. Search engines. Indexers. Car-based browsers.
Intelligent Agents. Self-learning knowledge-bases.
Andrew McFarland
wrote:
>> Which do you think is true: "Bold is always important" or "Bold is
>> usually important"?
>
>Good catch! Now does that actually matter? Does that change anything
>or than nothing?
It changes everything. If bold always means strongly emphasised then
<b> and <strong> mean the same thing. If bold sometimes means
something different then <b> and <strong> do not mean the same thing.
>Does that change the fact that the only way we can tell that something
>is <strong> is by its bolding?
There are other ways to indicate that an element is <strong>.
Particularly useful in visual browsers where the typeface that is used
doesn't have a bold equivalent, or where the bold version of a
typeface is illegiable.
Andrew
Andrew McFarland
>He just doesn't get it Eric. Maybe we should make him run around with
>a blindfold and ear muffs for a bit so he might realize that there is
>more to a web document than what your eyes receive from a graphical
>web browser.
Or make him write a search engine that is used for searching his own
site only.
Andrew McFarland
wrote:
>But I'm not a browser. I am a person who sees bolding whether it is
><b> or <strong>. As long as people think of importance associated with
>bolded words, <strong> is useless. It reaffirms what we already
>accept. If tomorrow blinking red text was meant to be important,
><strong> would probably change along in a few years.
OK.
We are making progress.
Kind of.
If tomorrow blinking red text was meant to be important, then anyone
that used the strong element correctly would be happy, because all
their web pages would continue to be correct. All the people that used
b when they should have used strong would have to update their pages.
Now you are going to say that blinking red text will never replace
bold text in that way. I agree with you. Most people here agree with
you. However, in some cultures, circumstances, or personal
preferences, `bold' is not the same as `important'. If you use <b>
when you should use <strong> you are insisting that everyone displays
your important things the way you want them to, rather than giving
them the ability to display them the way *they* want to.
Bold text is not always important, and important is not always bold.
Andrew
andkonDOTcom
> On 5 Jan 2003 19:41:35 -0800, andra...@hotmail.com (andkonDOTcom)
> wrote:
>
> >But I'm not a browser. I am a person who sees bolding whether it is
> ><b> or <strong>. As long as people think of importance associated with
> >bolded words, <strong> is useless. It reaffirms what we already
> >accept. If tomorrow blinking red text was meant to be important,
> ><strong> would probably change along in a few years.
>
> OK.
>
> We are making progress.
>
> Kind of.
>
> If tomorrow blinking red text was meant to be important, then anyone
> that used the strong element correctly would be happy, because all
> their web pages would continue to be correct. All the people that used
> b when they should have used strong would have to update their pages.
>
And the reason people couldn't do that with the more general <b> is?
> Now you are going to say that blinking red text will never replace
> bold text in that way. I agree with you. Most people here agree with
> you. However, in some cultures, circumstances, or personal
> preferences, `bold' is not the same as `important'. If you use <b>
> when you should use <strong> you are insisting that everyone displays
> your important things the way you want them to, rather than giving
> them the ability to display them the way *they* want to.
>
Oh yes, the "cultural" viewpoint. For matters of practicality, that
doesnt exist. If bolding in some places is not meant to be important,
your little set of logical tags will not help. Sure, they can use
<strong> but hey what about <newspaper> and the rest of the infinite
set of logical tags that could make webpages "culture" crossing (which
if course is a useless term since a vastly different culture is
already going to have a vastly different language)?
> Bold text is not always important, and important is not always bold.
Okay, let's try looking at the forest instead of the trees for a
minute. Currently, HTML uses an incomplete set of logical tags. In an
ideal world, there would be a tag for every logical situation.
However, that would confuse everyone since having a nearly infinite
set of tags is not a solution.
The solution is using the four (b, u, tt, i) general tags. They
signify different meanings that people can use. This way, it's not
chaos and not incomplete as the same tags are assigned to all possible
different meanings.
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >
> > Does that change the fact that the only way we can tell that something
> > is <strong> is by its bolding?
> >
>
> it's not a fact...it's not true at all
>
> we can tell that it's strong because:
>
> it sounds louder
Simply Web Talker 2000. The pinnacle of aural browsers? Hahaha.
> it is bright red
> it is in italics
> it is green and underlines
> it is blue on a shocking pink background
>
These aren't as good indications as bold is for important. These are
more attention getting that a general all-accepted note of importance.
> and for a search engine bot...because it is marked <strong>
>
Which ones? And what if I put <body><strong>[...]</strong></body> to
have me a higher ranking?
> not only is the web NOT a purely visual medium (do we have to send
> somebody round to tattoo that on your forehead?) but one can set up web
> browser defaults to represent these things in a number of ways
>
not purely visual? such as aural browsers? a good laugh comes again.
> <strong> is not inevitably bold
Can you name a majot browser default in which it isn't bold? The
reason bold is the default setting is because it is accepted that bold
is important.
andkonDOTcom
Yes, since <strong> has such giant implications. The search engine
argument is not turning out in your favor, as a great majority of
websites do not even validate.
andkonDOTcom
> On 5 Jan 2003 09:51:36 -0800, andra...@hotmail.com (andkonDOTcom)
> wrote:
>
> >All the major browsers (Mozilla, IE, Opera, Netscape) render it as
> ><b>.
>
>
> Whoopee! Do you really think that four major browsers constitute the
> whole of the World Wide Web?
Yep, pretty much. That's all that matters, really. And since Mozilla
and Opera (7b) are up to standards as much as they are ever are going
to be, there is no use in discussing other inferior browsers.
Jim Dabell
> Eric Jarvis <use...@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<MPG.188312a0c...@News.CIS.DFN.DE>...
>> and for a search engine bot...because it is marked <strong>
>>
>
> Which ones? And what if I put <body><strong>[...]</strong></body> to
> have me a higher ranking?
That's more likely to be counter productive. Consider this reasonable
implementation:
A page has a certain number of points allocated to it.
Elements such as <h1>, <strong>, and <em> are taken into account, and points
divided between them.
The words with the top five highest scores are taken to be relevent for that
page.
Your attempt at tricking the search engine has merely resulted in diluting
the scores of words that are actually important parts of the document,
probably resulting in a worse ranking overall. Not to mention the fact
that many search engines only index trusted content.
Google already weights <h1> elements as more important, I don't see how this
is different to <b> elements. In any case, it doesn't matter as the google
algorithm changes monthly, and there are all sorts of other search engines
people use.
>> not only is the web NOT a purely visual medium (do we have to send
>> somebody round to tattoo that on your forehead?) but one can set up web
>> browser defaults to represent these things in a number of ways
>>
>
> not purely visual? such as aural browsers? a good laugh comes again.
So now you are denying that search engines exist at all? Or do you have the
notion that somewhere, deep in google headquarters, there is a machine with
lots and lots of internet explorer windows popping up constantly, and some
special software to read what's on the screen?
>> <strong> is not inevitably bold
>
> Can you name a majot browser default in which it isn't bold?
Lynx. Before you assert that it isn't a major browser, make sure you can
back it up. It's shipped as standard with quite a few operating systems,
and no doubt installed on even more. It's considered the "standard"
text-mode browser.
And, as already pointed out numerous times, web browsers are not the only
html user-agents. I doubt the "browser default" for <strong> is bold for
the googlebot.
> The
> reason bold is the default setting is because it is accepted that bold
> is important.
Just because you repeat it over and over, it doesn't make it relevent to the
discussion. As I keep saying - that is a useful user-agent stylesheet. It
doesn't mean there isn't a need for meaningful markup.
--
Jim Dabell
Henri Sivonen
Jim Dabell <jim-u...@jimdabell.com> wrote:
> Are there any authoring tools that make it easy to use the proper
> characters?
Software running on Mac OS or Mac OS X.
> Will authoring tools ever be clever enough to insert the right
> characters (or will keyboards ever have appropriate keys on them)?
Apple's U.S. and Finnish/Swedish keyboard layouts have had the proper
quotation marks in such places that they can be typed with relative ease
(without memorizing numeric codes that are required on Windows) for over
a decade. The characters don't appear in the keycaps of Apple's
keyboards, though, so one needs to remember what to press.
--
Henri Sivonen
hsiv...@niksula.hut.fi
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/
Henri Sivonen
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkor...@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
> The idea of using <q> in order to generate language-dependent
> punctuation characters is wrong.
...
> Why should a markup notation like HTML reinvent the wheel here?
Because there was an example with markup substituting for
character-level quotation marks in The Handbook and they wanted to add
some SGMLisms to HTML 4 after the 3.2 detour? :-)
Alan J. Flavell
> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkor...@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
>
> > Why should a markup notation like HTML reinvent the wheel here?
>
> Because there was an example with markup substituting for
> character-level quotation marks in The Handbook and they wanted to add
> some SGMLisms to HTML 4 after the 3.2 detour? :-)
See e.g http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/logical.html
As you can see, <q> was already on the stocks for the never-completed
HTML3.0. I'm pretty sure I could find at least 2 browsers which
implemented it before the ill-omened HTML3.2 ever saw the twilight.
However, when they got around to codifying it for HTML4.0, they seem
to have screwed-up the language aspects: they implied that a quotation
in language B, when quoted from language A, should use the quotation
rules appropriate to language B - which is not at all the usual
publishing and typographical convention. (Logic would suggest using
the quotation rules appropriate to the immediately-enclosing language,
but, as best I can make out, publishing houses routinely use the
quotation rules of the main document, no matter how deeply the
different languages are nested.)
cheers
Dominik Boecker
[on Major Browsers]
> Yep, pretty much. That's all that matters, really. And since Mozilla
> and Opera (7b) are up to standards as much as they are ever are going
> to be, there is no use in discussing other inferior browsers.
How about search-engine-spiders? Usuall they don't use grphical
Brosers...
Dominik
--
Nichts ist Idiotensicher, die Idioten sind einfach zu erfinderisch.
Michael 'Michi' Nahrath in dcsmi über den Win-IE6
PGP-Key available: http://www.dominik-boecker.de/Dominik-Boecker.asc
Dominik Boecker
> Okay, here is my dandy experiment. Have one webpage with <b> and the
> other with <strong>... You cannot tell the two apart.
Wrong approach as long as HTML is concerned... You can tell the
difference.
Have a look at the elements used to mark up that document...
Remi Sabourin
> > Summary: CSS for full control,
>
> Now, here we must part company. On the WWW you simply do not have
> control. CSS is nothing more than a proposal (some call it a
> "suggestion"), which the client is free to cascade with their own
> stylesheet (part of the significance of the term "cascading") or,
> indeed, to ignore it entirely if found inappropriate to their browsing
> situation.
>
Yes, agree. By my comment of "full control", what I meant to say was
that CSS was actually meant (with some of its styles) as being able to
give content publishers more direct control over presentation.
Instead of <hr> you could style a transparent image with an indented
border and the browser, if compliant with CSS standards, should
display it exactly as you intended.
However, in practice, browsers play catch-up to the CSS standards, so
they don't implement all styles (and some perhaps some not exactly as
the new standard dictates). This is not to say that CSS does not give
the desktop publishing world strict control. It gives it, yet the
browsers don't know necessarily to interpret it.
Darin McGrew
>>> Summary: CSS for full control,
Alan J. Flavell <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>> Now, here we must part company. On the WWW you simply do not have
>> control. CSS is nothing more than a proposal (some call it a
>> "suggestion"), which the client is free to cascade with their own
>> stylesheet (part of the significance of the term "cascading") or,
>> indeed, to ignore it entirely if found inappropriate to their browsing
>> situation.
Remi Sabourin <nt...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, agree. By my comment of "full control", what I meant to say was
> that CSS was actually meant (with some of its styles) as being able to
> give content publishers more direct control over presentation.
You seem to have missed Alan's point. CSS is a language that "allows
authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts, spacing, and aural cues) to
structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications)."
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/>
CSS doesn't give authors any more control than they had before:
http://westciv.com/style_master/house/good_oil/not_paper/
Indeed, via user style sheets, CSS gives users even more control than they
had before:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/07/21/magazine/css_anarchist.html
--
Darin McGrew, mcg...@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da...@htmlhelp.com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/
"If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." - Will Rogers
Alan J. Flavell
> > > Summary: CSS for full control,
> >
> > Now, here we must part company. On the WWW you simply do not have
> > control. CSS is nothing more than a proposal (some call it a
> > "suggestion"), which the client is free to cascade with their own
> > stylesheet (part of the significance of the term "cascading") or,
> > indeed, to ignore it entirely if found inappropriate to their browsing
> > situation.
>
> Yes, agree.
(but then you go on to contradict that agreement, unfortunately...)
> However, in practice, browsers play catch-up to the CSS standards, so
> they don't implement all styles (and some perhaps some not exactly as
> the new standard dictates).
Sure, we both know all of that, but it's a separate dimension to the
issue which I was raising.
> This is not to say that CSS does not give
> the desktop publishing world strict control.
Oh, but it certainly is. The last word always lies with the user: in
CSS2 the user !important property always wins (correcting an error in
the design of CSS1), and even if it did not, then the user is always
free to disable CSS entirely.
> It gives it, yet the
> browsers don't know necessarily to interpret it.
True enough: but that was not the point I was trying to bring to your
attention.
best regards
--
"DO NOT READ WHILST THE BOX IS OPEN!" - warning
printed on the underside of a product package. (honestly!)
Chuck Taylor
wrote:
>Chuck Taylor <chuck.taylor@spamtrap> wrote in message news:<dpdh1voisglku7l0i...@4ax.com>...
>> Do you really think that four major browsers constitute the
>> whole of the World Wide Web?
>Yep, pretty much.
Well, that relieves me of any need to continue in THIS thread. Have a
nice day, if there are such things in your world.
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom <andra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Okay, here is my dandy experiment. Have one webpage with <b> and the
> > other with <strong>... You cannot tell the two apart.
>
> Wrong approach as long as HTML is concerned... You can tell the
> difference.
>
> Have a look at the elements used to mark up that document...
>
> Dominik
Wrong approach? Who says?
Let's take the case of Michael Wetterauer, a completely random name.
The poor fellow doesn't know HTML. He looks at a page with his
non-HTML expertise and doesn't know the difference. In fact, unless
you look at the source, no one can tell the difference. And what good
is a logical tag if you have to look at it directly to tell what it
means?
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom <andra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> [on Major Browsers]
>
> > Yep, pretty much. That's all that matters, really. And since Mozilla
> > and Opera (7b) are up to standards as much as they are ever are going
> > to be, there is no use in discussing other inferior browsers.
>
> How about search-engine-spiders? Usuall they don't use grphical
> Brosers...
>
> Dominik
You mean like google and yahoo and sorts? Well, here's is my thing
about them. Since they themselves on their pages us blatantly idiotic
markup, i am going to guess if that they use "small" (inline, text
level) tags, they are going to tank them the same, if worry about them
at all. Google algorithm programmer Lauren Chinault, another random
name, is probably going to rank pages with <b> and pages with <strong>
in the same way since she knows people use them interchangebly.
Although, I highly doubt any search engine really takes into
consideration the inline tags. So, once again, HTML is visual only.
andkonDOTcom
> On 5 Jan 2003 09:51:36 -0800, andkonDOTcom allegedly wrote...
>
>
> > Perhaps a URL with explanation since I highly doubt google uses
> > <strong> for any rankings, as people surely would have caught on and
> > started spamming by <strong>many many many keywords</strong>
> >
>
> You will not find a URL with an explanation, though you can do as
> other professionals do and take the time to install and reverse-
> engineer the technology to see what makes it work.
> http://www.thunderstone.com/
> http://www.google.com/
> http://www.inktomi.com/
>
Oh okay! So I should do something probably illegal... :) Arguing about
what google does or doesnt do is useless since we wont ever really
find out.
> Indeed, if you were not so lazy, you could easily find references on
> the web explaining the difference between <strong> and <b>
> http://www.think-ink.net/html/bold.htm
> http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/phrase/strong.html
> http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/font/b.html
> http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags6.htm
I know the difference between <strong> and <b>... That's not the
point. As long as we are stuck in a visual world of HTML, the
difference really does not matter. Aural browsers are useless to argue
about because they are crappy and useless, "tools" do not exist which
somehow use logical tags and reject the non-logical ones, and search
engines are fun to guess about.
andkonDOTcom
> On 4 Jan 2003 19:52:35 -0800, andra...@hotmail.com (andkonDOTcom)
> wrote:
>
> ><b> means bold. Bolding of words or text in usually understood to mean
> >important.
>
> Bold usually means important. But it doesn't always mean important.
> That is why <b> and <strong> are different. <strong> _always has the
> same meaning.
>
So then why hasnt HTML come with <newspaper> or <foreign>? It's either
an incomplete set of logical tags with which we have to work or a
nearly infinite but complete set. OR we could go with the established
meanings of the four common tags and leave it at that.
> <snip/>
> >(Sorry, I meant cite a newspaper as bibliography NOT a cite a quote
> >from a newspaper.) <i> like <b> has many implied meanings.
>
> You agree that <b> has many meanings. The key advantage of <strong> is
> that it has only one.
>
Yeah, so we should then create a tag for every meaning?
> > So why doesn't HTML have a <newspaper> tag?
>
> HTML is a lightweight markup language. The more element types a markup
> language has, the more a document can contain. HTML is nowhere near as
> complex as, say, DocBook, but it has much more structure than a flat
> ASCII file. HTML has enough detail to make _most_ possible pages have
> a clear structure, but not so much that common tools can't handle it.
>
> HTML is totally unsuitable for the long term storage of documents
> though - precisely because it has so few element types. In an ideal
> world, documents would be stored as some form of DocBook and then
> transformed into other formats as required - by DSSSL, XSLT, or
> whatever takes your fancy.
>
Long term storage as in...? I'd love if my site was up (perhpas in a
few days) because there is a nifty decade old "long term" storage
thingy on it. And how does an incomplete set of logical tags aid in
this storage?
andkonDOTcom
> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >>
> >> > I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly emphasized.
> >> > Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using more bolding
> >> > that strong), it looses its meaning.
> >>
> >> It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where the
> >> meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have consciously made
> >> - and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
> >
> > "supposed" to then they are meaningless.
>
> Thank you. That is the first sane thing you have posted here, I believe.
>
> THAT is why everybody here is trying to explain - that it's useless to use
> <b> when you mean <strong> and vice versa. Misuse of elements is why
> people who want to do useful stuff with a set of web pages must restrict
> themselves to the subset of documents created by authors who have a clue.
> Clueless authors *reduce* the utility of html (to the point where people
> get confused between <b> and <strong> elements, apparently).
>
>
I understand perfectly. But why use the incomplete set of logical HTML
tags when you can create the same meaning as understood by the readers
of your webpage by the four tags? Let's remember that logical tags get
theri style from the domain of accepted meanings (fancy name for the
four tags). That's why all logical tags are rendered usually as either
<b>, <i>, <tt>, and <u>.
> > The reason we have <strong>
> > usually bolded is because that IS the accepted visual meaning of
> > strong.
>
> That is correct in many cases (for some languages, I don't claim to be
> familiar with many at all). This is called a useful user-agent stylesheet
> - presenting documents in an easily understandable manner.
>
>
> > People's meanings of the four basic tags (b, u, tt, and i) are
> > enough because each of those (possibly with the exception of u) has
> > distinct meanings that are generally understood or can be applied.
>
> Understood by who? Perhaps *you* can use context to instantly decide that a
> certain part of the document that is in italics is actually a quote, but
> how is a computer to know that it isn't just something the author decided
> to give emphasis?
>
Usually the language determines the meaning. In English newspaper
names are usually meant to be italicized. If a guy from China was
reading it, he would not be confused as he would have been introduced
to the English language before and would have picked up on it.
> Computers are there to do work _for_ us - if we don't lie about the meaning
> of documents, they'll be able to do a much better job with them. Unless
> you have compelling evidence that natural language parsing is just around
> the corner?
>
>
> > If
> > I cite a newpaper as my source, I use <i>. If I want to discuss homo
> > sapiens, I use <i>. For a foreign phrase (such as coup d'etat) I use
> > <i>.
>
> And that is precisely the problem. You are treating html as a graphic
> design tool when it clearly isn't. You may be able to get the basic look
> you are after in many browsers, with the default settings, but you aren't
> encoding your html properly at all, which leads to problems whenever your
> assumption of mainstream browser + default settings falls down.
>
You are jumping to wrong conclusions. Is there a browser is which <b>
is not displayed as bold? Is there a browser which does not display
<i> as italics? ETC. If there is a browser, then it is heretical since
<b> stands for bold, etc.
>
> [snip]
> > Besides, there aren't enough logical tags. How about a newspaper tag?
>
> You mean the <blockquote> element? Or an actual <newspaper> element that
> contains the name of a newspaper? It's hard to comment without you being
> more specific.
>
I mean this: Joey Gochnour and Ryan Kemnitz were reading the New York
Times. In English, newspaper names are to be italicized in print.
>
> > Scientific classification? Instant messages? Etc...
>
> Propose them to www-html if you think there is a widespread need for them.
That's the point of my whole argument. The need for them is always
there. The need will always be there before it can be accepted. So,
why not use the already existing tags to mark them up?
andkonDOTcom
> On 5 Jan 2003 20:05:19 -0800, andkonDOTcom allegedly wrote...
> First you say:
> >
> > Well for my aural browser argument, search around for a recent (5
> > minutes before this one) post of mine. I can't really think of any
> > other non-visual implications of HTML.
>
> applications. Then you try to *think*:
>
> >
> > The only thing I could think of is perhaps search engines, somehow.
> > But why would you want queries on <strong> or such? The *possible*
> > implications do not outweigh the chaos of having a tag for every
> > logical instance.
> >
>
> <strong> is already an indicator of greater relevance in some search
> engines, as you have already been told but fail to comprehend.
> The *proven* implications are quite useful in many applications,
> thank you.
URL or example of search engine usage of <strong>? Or are they
axiomatic and thus proven out of thin air?
andkonDOTcom
> On 5 Jan 2003 20:05:19 -0800, andra...@hotmail.com (andkonDOTcom)
> wrote:
>
> >Chuck Taylor <chuck.taylor@spamtrap> wrote in message news:<fvch1v4a4b8a9vlr5...@4ax.com>...
>
> >> And as you alluded to by stipulating "visual meaning" in your sentence
> >> above, displaying text on a screen isn't the only application of HTML
> >> on the Web.
>
> >Well for my aural browser argument, search around for a recent (5
> >minutes before this one) post of mine. I can't really think of any
>
>
> Sorry to hear that. How about considering that "browser" isn't the
> only category of Web client in existence? You did manage to identify
> search engines as another category, but those aren't the only two.
>
>
> >> Go ahead, Tutorial Boy. Tell me no such tools exist. Tell me there's
> >> no reason why anyone would ever want one. I always love to see
> >> someone say "I'm not aware of it, therefore it doesn't exist."
>
> >The only thing I could think of is perhaps search engines, somehow.
> >But why would you want queries on <strong> or such? The *possible*
> >implications do not outweigh the chaos of having a tag for every
> >logical instance.
>
>
> specific element? Perhaps it needs to know the semantic importance of
> each element as it scans an entire document. And a B element isn't
> going to cut it for a tool that isn't interested in visually--or even
> aurally--rendering the document.
Non-visual and non-aural? Maybe a "feel-up" browser for the porn
industry? I couldn't wait for the tag names on that one :)... And what
else, olifactorial? <strong> then releases a strong scent and <b>
doesnt?
Chip C
> > How about search-engine-spiders? Usuall they don't use grphical
> > Brosers...
> >
> > Dominik
>
> You mean like google and yahoo and sorts? Well, here's is my thing
> about them. Since they themselves on their pages us blatantly idiotic
> markup, i am going to guess if that they use "small" (inline, text
> level) tags, they are going to tank them the same, if worry about them
> at all. Google algorithm programmer Lauren Chinault, another random
> name, is probably going to rank pages with <b> and pages with <strong>
> in the same way since she knows people use them interchangebly.
>
> Although, I highly doubt any search engine really takes into
> consideration the inline tags. So, once again, HTML is visual only.
>
OMG, do you really believe this nonsense you are spreading? This has
to rank as one of the most ignorant posts I have ever read.
Why don't you find out how search engines work, as I have mentioned
to you a number of times, before you go making a total ass out of
yourself and further eroding any credibility you have among the very
intelligent (much more so then me) folks who frequent this group?
--
Chip C
Personal site: http://www.chipcom.net/
Christmas Stories: http://www.christmas-stories.com/
Chip C
> Chip C <ch...@chipcom.net> wrote in message news:<MPG.18827a1ea...@news-server.neo.rr.com>...
> > On 5 Jan 2003 09:51:36 -0800, andkonDOTcom allegedly wrote...
> >
> >
> > > Perhaps a URL with explanation since I highly doubt google uses
> > > <strong> for any rankings, as people surely would have caught on and
> > > started spamming by <strong>many many many keywords</strong>
> > >
> >
> > You will not find a URL with an explanation, though you can do as
> > other professionals do and take the time to install and reverse-
> > engineer the technology to see what makes it work.
> > http://www.thunderstone.com/
> > http://www.google.com/
> > http://www.inktomi.com/
> >
>
> Oh okay! So I should do something probably illegal... :) Arguing about
> what google does or doesnt do is useless since we wont ever really
> find out.
You mean that YOU won't ever find out, because you are too lazy to do
the research and improve your skills and knowledge.
> > Indeed, if you were not so lazy, you could easily find references on
> > the web explaining the difference between <strong> and <b>
> > http://www.think-ink.net/html/bold.htm
> > http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/phrase/strong.html
> > http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/font/b.html
> > http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags6.htm
>
> I know the difference between <strong> and <b>... That's not the
> point. As long as we are stuck in a visual world of HTML, the
> difference really does not matter. Aural browsers are useless to argue
> about because they are crappy and useless, "tools" do not exist which
> somehow use logical tags and reject the non-logical ones, and search
> engines are fun to guess about.
>
The only person stuck in the *visual world of HTML* is you.
Chip C
> > <strong> is already an indicator of greater relevance in some search
> > engines, as you have already been told but fail to comprehend.
> > The *proven* implications are quite useful in many applications,
> > thank you.
>
> URL or example of search engine usage of <strong>? Or are they
> axiomatic and thus proven out of thin air?
>
Already provided. Again, for the upteenth time, why don't you do
your homework instead of bathering nonsense you know nothing about.
Download the Texis engine and see if you can figure out how a search
engine works. Geeze, you are really this thick?
Eric Jarvis
not the whole story though is it
lets go back a stage...our hero has to find the site in the first
place...so he searches on Google in order to find it...still fine
and back one more stage...googlebot goes to the site...it can't understand
the entirely visual based mark up...it goes away indexing the site as
being about something entirely irrelevant...thus rendering it next to
unfindable through Google
oh dear...badly thought out mark up appears to have defeated our
hero...the site is now not seen
or are you about to claim that Google doesn't exist?...or that nobody uses
it?
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"I am a man of many parts, unfortunately most of
them are no longer in stock"
Timo Pirinen
> Usually the language determines the meaning. In English newspaper
> names are usually meant to be italicized. If a guy from China was
> reading it, he would not be confused as he would have been
introduced
> to the English language before and would have picked up on it.
Poppycock, Andky. You are not making any sense. What on earth do
italics have to do with one's ability to understand a foreign
language? The guy from China can be fluent in English without
knowing anything about the ways of the English newspapers. Even I
manage to understand some, maybe even most of your ramblings,
without ever having read a newspaper in English. They are not very
common objects in countries, where English is not even a minority
language, you know.
--
Timo Pirinen
piri...@dlc.fi
"Ääliö älä lyö, ööliä läikkyy!"
Isofarro
> That's why all logical tags are rendered usually as either
> <b>, <i>, <tt>, and <u>.
None of the following elements render as you suggest above:
abbr, acronym, del, ins, label, legend.
--
Iso.
FAQs: http://html-faq.com http://alt-html.org http://allmyfaqs.com/
Recommended Hosting: http://www.affordablehost.com/
Web Standards: http://www.webstandards.org/
Isofarro
> Aural browsers are useless to argue
> about because they are crappy and useless,
How is using a graphical browser better for someone with no sight?
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> > ungelesen...@dominik-boecker.de (Dominik Boecker) wrote in message news:<1foe2u5.zk5...@ID-42033.user.dfncis.de>...
> > > andkonDOTcom <andra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Okay, here is my dandy experiment. Have one webpage with <b> and the
> > > > other with <strong>... You cannot tell the two apart.
> > >
> > > Wrong approach as long as HTML is concerned... You can tell the
> > > difference.
> > >
> > > Have a look at the elements used to mark up that document...
> > >
> > > Dominik
> >
> > Wrong approach? Who says?
> >
> > Let's take the case of Michael Wetterauer, a completely random name.
> > The poor fellow doesn't know HTML. He looks at a page with his
> > non-HTML expertise and doesn't know the difference. In fact, unless
> > you look at the source, no one can tell the difference. And what good
> > is a logical tag if you have to look at it directly to tell what it
> > means?
> >
>
> not the whole story though is it
>
This is gonna be interesting...
> lets go back a stage...our hero has to find the site in the first
> place...so he searches on Google in order to find it...still fine
>
Yeah...
> and back one more stage...googlebot goes to the site...it can't understand
> the entirely visual based mark up...it goes away indexing the site as
> being about something entirely irrelevant...thus rendering it next to
> unfindable through Google
>
And you know this because you know the algorithm or are just guessing
google actually uses <strong>? If it were to use <strong> as a rank
indicator, it would have to use <b> since it is more widespread. But
then again, that is speculation just like yours...
> oh dear...badly thought out mark up appears to have defeated our
> hero...the site is now not seen
>
Are you saying badly marked up pages do not achieve a successful
ranking? Try searching for HTML Tutorials :) Maybe one of the top 20
validate. :)
> or are you about to claim that Google doesn't exist?...or that nobody uses
> it?
Are you saying bad markup has an effect on search efforts? If google
was such an expert search engine on logical tags, wouldnt you think
it's own website wouldnt include <font> and invalid markup?
andkonDOTcom
> On 6 Jan 2003 10:33:30 -0800, andra...@hotmail.com (andkonDOTcom)
> wrote:
>
> >Chuck Taylor <chuck.taylor@spamtrap> wrote in message news:<dpdh1voisglku7l0i...@4ax.com>...
>
> >> Do you really think that four major browsers constitute the
> >> whole of the World Wide Web?
>
> >Yep, pretty much.
>
>
> Well, that relieves me of any need to continue in THIS thread. Have a
> nice day, if there are such things in your world.
Well could you name any others that are worth the time of day? Are
there any ones that are compliant? Speaking of which, there are only
nice days in my world.
andkonDOTcom
> On 6 Jan 2003 20:07:24 -0800, andkonDOTcom allegedly wrote...
>
> > > How about search-engine-spiders? Usuall they don't use grphical
> > > Brosers...
> > >
> > > Dominik
> >
> > You mean like google and yahoo and sorts? Well, here's is my thing
> > about them. Since they themselves on their pages us blatantly idiotic
> > markup, i am going to guess if that they use "small" (inline, text
> > level) tags, they are going to tank them the same, if worry about them
> > at all. Google algorithm programmer Lauren Chinault, another random
> > name, is probably going to rank pages with <b> and pages with <strong>
> > in the same way since she knows people use them interchangebly.
> >
> > Although, I highly doubt any search engine really takes into
> > consideration the inline tags. So, once again, HTML is visual only.
> >
>
> OMG, do you really believe this nonsense you are spreading? This has
> to rank as one of the most ignorant posts I have ever read.
Perhaps a URL to where google or any other major search engine (or a
small one just for curiosity's sake) list using inline tags? And if
such inline tags are used wouldnt you think <b> (which is more
widespread than <strong) would be given the same ranking value as
<strong>?
> Why don't you find out how search engines work, as I have mentioned
> to you a number of times, before you go making a total ass out of
> yourself and further eroding any credibility you have among the very
> intelligent (much more so then me) folks who frequent this group?
URL? URL? URL? You don't know anymore how search engines work that the
average lazy bum, like Lee Bird (completely random), since you have no
access to their secretly kept algorithms. Perhaps you should stop
spreading shit around which you have no way to prove but think that it
sounds all good and dandy.
andkonDOTcom
> On 6 Jan 2003 20:13:10 -0800, andkonDOTcom allegedly wrote...
>
> > Chip C <ch...@chipcom.net> wrote in message news:<MPG.18827a1ea...@news-server.neo.rr.com>...
> > > On 5 Jan 2003 09:51:36 -0800, andkonDOTcom allegedly wrote...
> > >
> > >
> > > > Perhaps a URL with explanation since I highly doubt google uses
> > > > <strong> for any rankings, as people surely would have caught on and
> > > > started spamming by <strong>many many many keywords</strong>
> > > >
> > >
> > > You will not find a URL with an explanation, though you can do as
> > > other professionals do and take the time to install and reverse-
> > > engineer the technology to see what makes it work.
> > > http://www.thunderstone.com/
> > > http://www.google.com/
> > > http://www.inktomi.com/
> > >
> >
> > Oh okay! So I should do something probably illegal... :) Arguing about
> > what google does or doesnt do is useless since we wont ever really
> > find out.
>
> You mean that YOU won't ever find out, because you are too lazy to do
> the research and improve your skills and knowledge.
>
You are the one asserting that google use algorithms that include
<strong>. I am refuting it and saying that if it does use <strong> it
is going to weigh it the same as <b>. You are the one who needs to
show me that <strong> is considered. So please give me a URL instead
of this philosophical crap.
>
> > > Indeed, if you were not so lazy, you could easily find references on
> > > the web explaining the difference between <strong> and <b>
> > > http://www.think-ink.net/html/bold.htm
> > > http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/phrase/strong.html
> > > http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/font/b.html
> > > http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags6.htm
> >
> > I know the difference between <strong> and <b>... That's not the
> > point. As long as we are stuck in a visual world of HTML, the
> > difference really does not matter. Aural browsers are useless to argue
> > about because they are crappy and useless, "tools" do not exist which
> > somehow use logical tags and reject the non-logical ones, and search
> > engines are fun to guess about.
> >
>
> The only person stuck in the *visual world of HTML* is you.
So care to name any actual existing "tools" (apart from search engines
which still do fine with all this "evil" visual markup) that are worth
the time of day which ARENT visual?
andkonDOTcom
> andkonDOTcom wrote:
>
> > I can't really think of any
>
> Voice over XML browsers. Search engines. Indexers. Car-based browsers.
> Intelligent Agents. Self-learning knowledge-bases.
And why these don't do fine with regular visual markup and are in need
of using the *incomplete* set of elements in HTML?
andkonDOTcom
> >> >> andkonDOTcom wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> > I can say that <verystrong> means that it is very strongly
> >> >> > emphasized. Unless, it shows up as very strongly emphasized (using
> >> >> > more bolding that strong), it looses its meaning.
> >> >>
> >> >> It only loses meaning because you chose to present it in a way where
> >> >> the meaning isn't relevant to you. This is a choice you have
> >> >> consciously made - and a choice no-one else is forced to make.
> >> >
> >> > The point is that if logical tags don't represent
> >>
> >
> > You mean to invoke an aural browser conversation?
>
> It is a semantic browser not an aural browser.
>
> [Aural browser]
> > If it's harder for me to use,
> > what about someone who is actually dependent on it, such as the blind?
>
> Are you recommending that blind people should only use graphical browsers?
>
NO! I am recommending blind people not to use the CRAPPY, EXISTING aural browsers.
>
> > but the only thing we can do with
> > HTML at the end of the day is stare at web pages on a computer in a
> > browser.
>
> That's all _you_ seem capable of doing. I, on the other hand, use it for a
> lot more. Like a self-learning knowledge base.
And why "visual" tags come into conflict in this "knowledge base"?