Re: Definitions of semantic format elements

David - Morris (dwm@shell.portal.com)
Mon, 15 May 95 14:46:49 EDT

On Mon, 15 May 1995, Larry Masinter wrote:

> (reading http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/...)
>[...]
> ================================================================
> CITE
>
> <CITE>...</CITE> Level 1
>
> The CITE element is used for citations, e.g., such as when a document
> quotes another source. This is often rendered as italics. Cited
> paragraphs are often rendered nested.
------ < "indented" is a better
word I think.

[...]
> The CODE element is used for examples of text in computer programming
> languages. In many contexts, this is rendered in a monospaced font.

? should we declare spaces significant? Differentiate from <pre>?

> The EM element is used for emphasis, e.g., it is rendered as italics
> in graphical browsers or emphasized when spoken.

The EM element is used for emphasis, e.g., it -might- be rendered as
italics or emphasized when spoken.

To retain the guidance style *and* I see no need to mention a browser
type.

BUT reflecting on Larry's comments it occured to me that there a number
of discipline specific style books as well as some general ones. When
HTML is marking document structure for common textual authoring idioms
like citation, I think it would be good if we could include a generic
reference to 'the style guide' on which the UA rendering is based
and leave it to a higher authority to assure consistant interpretation.

New structures introduced by HTML, for example <code> or <pre> we
would need to provide more guidance for.

Dave Morris