[Pmwiki-users] the descriptions of emphasis

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 10:12:46AM +1300, John Rankin wrote:
> 
> So what might one do for '/cite/' markup?

Oops, I forgot about '/cite/'.  Hmm.  Maybe '~italic~'?  Or perhaps '~cite~'
and '/italic/'?

> One of the great strengths of PmWiki is that it is standards compliant
> and makes it easy for authors to implement good web practices, without
> even knowing that they are doing so. As we move into the era where the 
> web properly separates content from its presentation, it seems to me a
> great leap backwards to introduce support for the <b> and <i> tags. 

I do agree greatly with this sentiment.

> This is surely what the documentation refers to when it says
>   "doubled single-quotes is used for for emphasis (usually italics)"

Yes, at the time I created PmWiki I consciously chose <em> and <strong>
over <i> and <b> for these very reasons.

> A pedant (moi?) might argue that when writers use bold and italics,
> they are performing a layout task, not a writing task.

I argued that in my earlier message :-).

> Just as PmWiki doesn't try to replace HTML, perhaps it also doesn't
> try to emulate the bad habits of word processors. 

Amen.  Perhaps I need to resurrect my posts/essays on the fallacies of 
"WYSIWYG".

Pm