Re: Tags inside themselves?

Murray Maloney <murray@sco.COM>
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 94 10:49:32 EDT
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From: Murray Maloney <murray@sco.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-wg@oclc.org>
Subject: Re: Tags inside themselves?
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Even though this is addressed to Dan, I am replying...
> 
> Dear Dan,
> 
> I think I understand now how nested highlighting would be processed and 
> Murray makes a good point about the intent of highlighting (i.e. italics in 
> italics should really be plain).
> 
> I'd like to take this one step further. If I understand the present tagging 
> rules, the following example would be proper.
> 
> <B>text and more text and <B> and then some bolded text</B></B>
> 
> Before today, I would have said this is meaningless tagging and that the 
> internal set of B tags should be ignored. Now I have to ask, "Does this mean 
> the internal set of B tags should be presented as plain?"

Maybe, but not necesarily.  I think that it is important that
the formatter (browser) keep track of context and do what is 
appropriate based on context.  Each browser implementor will 
have to establish their own rules.  For the example, I would
either format the nested <B> as italic or bold-italic.  However,
if this phrase were contained within another emphasis type, then
I might have to re-consider... If nested within an italic phrase,
then the initial <B> could remain bold and the nested one could
go to bold-italic or revert to roman, etc.
> 
> Hopefully not. It would seem useful to distinguish highlighting over a 
> paragraph level font from the highlighting-on-highlighting case.
> 
> By the way, B is just used as an example. All highlighting tags appear to 
> defined this way. The DTD now says:
> 
> <!ELEMENT (%font;) --(%phrase.content)+>
> 
> where %font is defined as a member of %phrase.content.
> 
> This seem to say that B is allowed directly inside B. The HTML DTD 
> Reference, (pages 6.x), in fact reports it this way. Shouldn't the 
> definition somehow exclude the specific tag from appearing inside itself?
> 
> NOTE 1: I don't see a problem with an alternating sequence such as a B tag 
> inside an I tag inside a B tag. Just the B..B, CITE..CITE, etc. combinations.

Now that you mention CITE in CITE, I wonder about that one.
The formatting is not my big concern.  It just doesn't make
a lot of sense to have nested <CITE>s.
> 
> NOTE 2: I really like the presentation format you use in the HTML DTD 
> Reference. This helps me a lot in understanding the rules in the DTD itself 
> which can be dense. (It was in the Reference that I noticed this feature of 
> B allowed in B, etc. which I am raising here.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Stan Newton
> Newton Computing Solutions
>