Re: ERROR(?) in content declarations for character tags

"Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 94 12:55:34 EDT
Message-id: <9409231656.AA02717@ulua.hal.com>
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From: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-wg@oclc.org>
Subject: Re: ERROR(?) in content declarations for character tags 
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In message <9409231230.aa14987@dali.scocan.sco.COM>, Murray Maloney writes:
>
>Yes, this is a bit contrived, but since I am the technical publications
>architect and strategist for a UNIX Development System, I figure that
>I have artistic licence.

Chuckle.


It would take a long time for us to agree on exactly what combinations
of highlighting tags have reasonable semantic interpretations.

So let's look at the benefits of making this change to the spec in light
of the related costs:

One factor is this: let's try to keep the number of element types down
to a minimum, for the sake of implementors. Never forget that HTML is,
above all else, cheap technology.

So I wonder: what would be the net effect of precisely encoding our
beliefs about what highlighting tags make sense in various contexts?

	* As an implementor, I would probably code for the most
	  general case, and use it for all highlighting tags.

	* As an author, I'd hate to keep track of 12 different rules
	  for what can go where.

Do we believe that making KBD inside KBD illegal will catch a significant
number of authoring errors? Do we believe it will significantly enhance
the fidelity of communications on the web?

I don't believe so.

I say leave it as is.

Dan