A week ago, i wrote a message here lamenting the ridiculous proliferation
of easily-abusable tags[1, 2] in the proposed HTML 3.0 specification[3].
I meant to reply but got sidetracked. I have similar feelings but not
so strong.
Summary: why we don't need....
CODE, KBD: redundant. Use SAMP.
<em rend="scream">No</em>. CODE and KBD are _quite_ different. If
anything is to go, it should be SAMP, which has no meaning. Ideally I
suppose one ought to have <input type="foo bar"> and <output type="bar
foo"> so you can arbitrarize (heh:-) the whole shebang...
AU: too specific. apply attributes of all kinds to PERSON
instead.
<em rend="shout">No</em>. AU if anything ought to be within CITE,
along with a reasonable BOOKTITLE and PUBL. IMHO.
PERSON is a wholly different thing and stands alone.
ACRONYM, ABBREV: redundant. Use DFN.
With attributes, yes.
INS, DEL: too specific. apply attributes to P instead.
No, you may want to <del>remove short phrases</del> instead.
S, U, BIG, SMALL: purely presentational markup. doesn't belong in HTML.
Agreed. Create a floating HILITE with attribute REND for occasions
where you need to _represent_ some visual highlighting but cannot
describe it adequately because you don't know why it's there.
BTW, those of you who are looking at HTML only from the _prescriptive_
view: BEWARE -- there are a lot of occasions when people will want to
use it as _descriptive_ markup on pre-existing text not their own.
and i still wonder about:
Q: too specific. are we going to mark up <PAREN>, <SENTENCE>,
etc. also?
No, why would you want to. This looks like a non sequitur to me.
I don't see what's wrong with Q. What would you rather have? Q and
BLOCKQUOTE are two entirely separate things. But BQ should get
grilled.
///Peter