[pmwiki-users] Re: Re: <div> markup suggestions...?

Bronwyn Boltwood arndis at gmail.com
Tue Mar 1 16:26:17 CST 2005


On 02 Mar 2005 10:14:44 +1300, John Rankin <john.rankin at affinity.co.nz> wrote:
> On the whole, I think it's a bad idea to present divisions as
> 'styles'; rather they are a form of semantic markup, which
> allows authors to ascribe /meaning/ to a block of text. How
> the semantics are represented is a separate consideration.

This is a good point. I've learned enough about typography and graphic
design that I use them to convey information, instead of just
decorating.  Combine that with web-standards style HTML+CSS coding.
Result: I assign a semantic markup, and a style to that semantic
markup.

How are divs going to be used?

Some people will want to use divs decoratively, but I think that the
majority will use divs to assign semantic meaning, which gets
represented by stylistic attributes.  E.g.

- everything in this box is a particular person's contribution or
opinion. (Dan's "voices")
- everything in this box is a sidebar of some kind -- commentary,
tangent, or whatnot.

Ordinary contributors will want to create their own div styles that
they can name and reuse, without needing admin access or intervention.

This is why I think we need divs and block wikistyles to be the same
thing, or at least work the same way.

Bronwyn



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