For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and <b>. Is this right or wrong?
Arguments against are presented by one of our own Wikipedians, claiming it's an abuse of semantic markup: http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i
About the only argument in favor is "that's what UseMod did, and Wiki before it".
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 02:49:32PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and <b>. Is this right or wrong?
Arguments against are presented by one of our own Wikipedians, claiming it's an abuse of semantic markup: http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i
About the only argument in favor is "that's what UseMod did, and Wiki before it".
Did UseMod actually do it ? As far as I remember, UseMod did <i> and <b>, and it was changed to <em> and <strong> in Phase II.
On May 2, 2004, at 15:33, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Did UseMod actually do it ? As far as I remember, UseMod did <i> and <b>, and it was changed to <em> and <strong> in Phase II.
I just checked on MeatBall, '' and ''' do produce <em> and <strong>.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On May 2, 2004, at 15:38, Ivan Krstic wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and <b>. Is this right or wrong?
<b> and <i> are deprecated; neither exists in XHTML 1.0 basic or XHTML 2.0.
That doesn't make a case in favor of <em> and <strong>; the newer XHTML standards recommend the use of style sheets for non-semantic formatting, and many (most?) of the '' and '''s appearing on Wikipedia are not "emphasis" or "strong emphasis", but ship names, species names, foreign words, minor headings in tables, parenthetical text (like stub footers), mathematical variables, quotations, defining instances, etc.
Also note that XHTML 2.0 is incomplete. The working draft online indicates that there is not consensus on whether <strong> will be kept, deprecated, or even removed outright: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-inline-text.html#sec_9.11.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and <b>. Is this right or wrong?
Considering how our end users use them, it probably is wrong now that you mention it. People use them just for italics and bold, they don't reallly mean "em" or "strong" by them, not usually anyway.
I've always thought (and we used to talk about it more) that it'd be cool if wiki markup supported just a touch more semantics. For example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
<person>Thomas Jefferson</person> <nation>Germany</nation> <book>Gone With the Wind</book> <movie>Gone with the Wind</movie>
just because there would be a lot of neat stuff that could be automated if we had that.
But the hairy problem, as yet unsolved, is how to do that in a manner that is sane, consistent, easy to learn, etc.
---
Another thought -- in most cases, when we have semantic markup, we are probably also desirous of linking to another article. The remaining cases, where we want to do something in the text but *not* link to another article, are probably almost all purely presentational.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
<person>Thomas Jefferson</person> <nation>Germany</nation> <book>Gone With the Wind</book>
The way to do this markup, of course, is to write [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].
These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase", out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that describes the subject of those words. For example, the page on Gone With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics. Just like the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.
This is just an idea. I don't know if this is a good one.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
<person>Thomas Jefferson</person> <nation>Germany</nation> <book>Gone With the Wind</book>
The way to do this markup, of course, is to write [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].
These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase", out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that describes the subject of those words. For example, the page on Gone With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics. Just like the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.
This is just an idea. I don't know if this is a good one.
And this, of course, will fit in perfectly with the category mechanism, which is an ideal lightweight way to specify these kinds of properties by writing [[category=person]] on Jefferson's page, [[category=nation]] on the Germany page, and [[category=book]] on the ''Gone With the Wind'' page.
-- Neil
Oh, Lars, that would never work. If you let people just edit a website, it would go to hell! ;-)
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
<person>Thomas Jefferson</person> <nation>Germany</nation> <book>Gone With the Wind</book>
The way to do this markup, of course, is to write [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].
These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase", out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that describes the subject of those words. For example, the page on Gone With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics. Just like the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.
This is just an idea. I don't know if this is a good one.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Ooops, I thought Lars was just teasing! I didn't read closely enough, there is an actual good idea here. Sorry! :-)
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
<person>Thomas Jefferson</person> <nation>Germany</nation> <book>Gone With the Wind</book>
The way to do this markup, of course, is to write [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].
These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase", out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that describes the subject of those words. For example, the page on Gone With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics. Just like the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.
This is just an idea. I don't know if this is a good one.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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