TEXT, C, NOBR and WORD tags

Mike Meyer (mwm@contessa.phone.net)
Thu, 6 Jul 95 02:09:12 EDT

The talk on the TEXT/C tag has collided with the <BIG>/<SMALL> issue
and one other issue I run into regularly to create a mess. I'm hoping
someone can find something usefull in said mess.

The one other issue is that I like to write things like:

<code>/foobar/<var>user</var></code>

I.e. - a code fragment with a variable part. This is perfectly legal,
but has the same problems as

<big>S</big>ee what I can do!

in that it allows line breaks where they don't belong, and causes
intelligent parsers to break up the words.

Solution: a WORD tag, to indicate that the enclosed object is a single
word, and should be treated as such. This is basically the NHTML NOBR
tag, except it names the content it encloses instead of the
presentation effect it has.

A better alternative would be a WORD or NOBR attribute all character
tags, so I could say:

<code word>/foobar/<var>user</var></code>

to get the desired effect. However, for some cases (like the second
one), you need:

<text word><big>S</big>ee</word> what I can do!

My personal opinion is that HTML+ got this one right, and all the font
tags should vanish from strict HTML 3, to be replaced by either TEXT
(or something similar) as a place to hang references to a style sheet.

<mike