[Wikipedia-l] Re: <span>

[David Friedland]

I wish you the best of luck in your campaign. I've asked for <span> tags 
  TWICE before and got shot down twice with the explanation that <span> 
tags make the wikitext harder to read (as though <div> tags were somehow 
better) and that there should be some universal styles for styling 
particular things, with wikiformatting tags to go along with them. I 
hope you can be more convincing than I was. Of course, said universal 
styles never got made and we go on, unable to make <span> tags, and with 
no real substitute other than the long-deprecated <font> tag and its 
friends. Enabling them requires changing exactly one line of code.

Sigh.

- David

Peter Gervai wrote:
> hello,
> 
> from time to time I would like to use <span> tag for inline element
> styling, but it's not supported, so I have to use <div> and dirty tricks to
> get it done, but it's not the same: since DIV is not an inherent inline
> element, it's very hard to use it for blending something into the normal
> text flow (like math for example, see my hack on meta/mediawiki user
> guide/math using div instead of span).
> 
> maybe i'm wrong and there shouldn't be such styling on wikipedia pages
> (people against tags would say "it makes wikitext harder to read for nontech
> people"), so please share your opinion. I would like to use span, and would
> like to have it enabled in mediawiki pages. As far as I know it does not
> present cross-scripting or other vulnerabilities (I didn't explore this topic
> too deep though).
> 
> if nobody objects or convinces me that I'm on the road to hell I'll try to
> convince brion (which is probably the hardest part :)).
> 
> thanks,
> peter