RE: Whitespace

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From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Message-id: <9401121052.AA22176@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: RE: Whitespace
To: www-talk@www0.cern.ch
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 94 10:52:52 GMT
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.36.1.1]
Content-Length: 1328

Larry Masinter writes:

> In reviewing the HTML design, try to keep in mind folks with an audio
> interface, who expect the document to be read to them. There are lots
> of ways to render a heading or a title in spoken language, and even a
> way to render 'emphasis', and even varying degrees of emphasis.
> However, it's very hard to render 'bold'.

In using emphasis authors would like to be sure that a given set of
emphasis tags will in fact be rendered differently on *ALL* browsers.
The precise way these are differentiated will clearly depend on the
characteristics of each browser, on dumb terminals email conventions
could be used while on others color and font attributes can be used.

Now, while we could use neutral names such as <HP0> <HP1> ... <HP4>
most of us would prefer more meaningful names which convey the common
interpretation. This explains why <B>, <I> etc are well liked.

The problem with "logical" emphasis tags is there is no easy way of
pulling together an effective small set. In my attempts to do so for
HTML+, it rapidly became apparent that this is a bottomless pit.
The set in the DTD provides just a few extras to those in HTML, perhaps
leaning too far towards the needs of computer manuals. As for <EM> and
<STRONG> these are ok for some purposes, but comprise too small a set.

Dave Raggett