[Pmwiki-users] the descriptions of emphasis

David Spitzley dspitzle
Thu Dec 2 07:41:02 CST 2004


Well, I don't know how much work has been put into standards-compliance
on PmWiki, but both <b> and <i> tags have been deprecated in current
HTML standards, on the grounds that they are pure formating tags,
whereas <em> and <strong> represent variations in meaning.  I don't
think reintroducing deprecated tags is a particularly desirable move.


David

>>> Neil Herber <nospam at mail.eton.ca> 12/2/2004 8:31:12 AM >>>
PmWiki principle number 1 is "Favor writers over readers", and it goes
on 
to note that burdening writers with the minutia of HTML is
undesirable.

With that principle in mind, I would suggest that the three modes of
text 
emphasis should be renamed, and the HTML that PmWiki emits should be 
changed. Anybody who has used a word processor knows about italics and

bold, but the concept of "emphasis" is almost pure HTML.

As far as I can tell, these changes should have absolutely no effect on
any 
user *unless* their browser settings or style sheets render the
emphasis 
modes differently.

Doubled single-quotes ('') usually render as italics but emit <em></em>
tags
Call this mode "italics" and emit <i></i>

Tripled single-quotes (''') usually render as bold but emit 
<strong></strong> tags
Call this mode "bold" and emit <b></b>

Five single-quotes (''''') usually render as bold italics but emit 
<strong><em></em></strong> tags
Call this mode "bold italics" and emit <b><i></i></b>

These thoughts came to me when I noticed that the descriptions of these

modes in the various Quick Reference proposals used the bold and italic

nomenclature even though the HTML did not use <b> and <i> tags. The 
descriptions in the current PmWiki documentation are dead accurate. For

example:

>Use doubled single-quotes (''), i.e., two apostrophes, for emphasis 
>(usually italics)


Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/ 
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668 


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