Markup with semantics in mind

[Adrienne Boswell]

In the site I am redoing, I am frequently running into this screnario:
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

where the tel and fax should be bold to stand out. Currently, I am using
span with a class, eg: <span class="fields"> and fields is font-
weight:bold.

I am wondering whether it would better just to use <b>, as it is for
presentation only.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, Adrienne Boswell <ar****@yahoo.com>
vouchsafed:

In the site I am redoing, I am frequently running into this screnario:
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

where the tel and fax should be bold to stand out. Currently, I am using
span with a class, eg: <span class="fields"> and fields is font-
weight:bold.

I am wondering whether it would better just to use <b>, as it is for
presentation only.

You could use <em> or <strong> and style them.

--
Neredbojias
Infinity has its limits.

[Mark Parnell]

Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Neredbojias
<http://www.neredbojias.com/fliam.php?cat=alt.html> declared in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

You could use <em> or <strong> and style them.

I think Adrienne's point is that she doesn't want them emphasised as
such - it is merely a visual thing.

--
Mark Parnell
My Usenet is improved; yours could be too:
http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Mark Parnell
<we*******@clarkecomputers.com.au> writing in news:6rdy648x43r
$.***@markparnell.com.au:

Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Neredbojias
<http://www.neredbojias.com/fliam.php?cat=alt.html> declared in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

You could use <em> or <strong> and style them.

I think Adrienne's point is that she doesn't want them emphasised as
such - it is merely a visual thing.

Absolutely correct, similar to <img src="logo.png" alt="" ...>, purely for
presentation.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Spartanicus]

Adrienne Boswell <ar****@yahoo.com> wrote:

In the site I am redoing, I am frequently running into this screnario:
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

where the tel and fax should be bold to stand out. Currently, I am using
span with a class, eg: <span class="fields"> and fields is font-
weight:bold.

I am wondering whether it would better just to use <b>, as it is for
presentation only.

It doesn't really matter, using <b> is a tiny bit more efficient.

--
Spartanicus

[dk_sz]

> I am wondering whether it would better just to use <b>, as it is for

presentation only.

That's at least what I am doing... So... +1 :-)
--
best regards
Thomas Schulz
http://www.micro-sys.dk/products/sitemap-generator/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Adrienne Boswell <ar****@yahoo.com> scripsit:

In the site I am redoing, I am frequently running into this screnario:
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

where the tel and fax should be bold to stand out. Currently, I am
using span with a class, eg: <span class="fields"> and fields is font-
weight:bold.

I am wondering whether it would better just to use <b>, as it is for
presentation only.

It would be more semantic to use <b> than to use <span>. The <span> element
has absolutely no semantics, apart from constituting an inline element and
not a block element, and even this is presentational or pure syntax rather
than semantics proper. The <b> element means a suggestion to bold the text,
though with no indication of why.

As regards to <b> vs. <strong>, it's really mostly a matter of splitting
hairs, with little practical impact now or in the imaginable future. We know
that <b> mostly means (strong) emphasis coupled with the idea of expressing
this by bolding, so it would be naive to process documents pretending we
don't know that.

Telephone and fax numbers would best be presented using the international
notation (as per CCITT/ITU-T E.123 recommendation), with a plus sign and a
country prefix and with no hyphens, e.g.
[phone]
On the WWW, a foreigner may visit your page.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

As regards to <b> vs. <strong>, it's really mostly a matter of
splitting hairs, with little practical impact now or in the
imaginable future. We know that <b> mostly means (strong) emphasis
We know that in theory, <b> can mean many different things for which
bold text is appropriate *except* strong emphasis, since, in theory,
if strong emphasis is meant, then the correct markup would be <strong>
coupled with the idea of expressing this by bolding, so it would be
naive to process documents pretending we don't know that.

Uh-uh, it would be naive to pretend that 90 percent of everything
wasn't crud. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from that, however:
the saying about "billions of flies can't be wrong" comes
unappetisingly to mind.

all the best

[arbpen]

Alan J. Flavell wote:

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

As regards to <b> vs. <strong>, it's really mostly a matter of
splitting hairs, with little practical impact now or in the
imaginable future. We know that <b> mostly means (strong) emphasis

We know that in theory, <b> can mean many different things for which
bold text is appropriate *except* strong emphasis, since, in theory,
if strong emphasis is meant, then the correct markup would be <strong>

coupled with the idea of expressing this by bolding, so it would be
naive to process documents pretending we don't know that.

Uh-uh, it would be naive to pretend that 90 percent of everything
wasn't crud. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from that, however:
the saying about "billions of flies can't be wrong" comes
unappetisingly to mind.

all the best

Thank you - <b> it is!

--
Adrienne Boswell at work
http://atlas.nextblock.com/files/
Please respond to the group so others can share

[arbpen]

Jukka K. Korpela wote:

Adrienne Boswell <ar****@yahoo.com> scripsit:

In the site I am redoing, I am frequently running into this screnario:
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

where the tel and fax should be bold to stand out. Currently, I am
using span with a class, eg: <span class="fields"> and fields is font-
weight:bold.

I am wondering whether it would better just to use <b>, as it is for
presentation only.

It would be more semantic to use <b> than to use <span>. The <span> element
has absolutely no semantics, apart from constituting an inline element and
not a block element, and even this is presentational or pure syntax rather
than semantics proper. The <b> element means a suggestion to bold the text,
though with no indication of why.

As regards to <b> vs. <strong>, it's really mostly a matter of splitting
hairs, with little practical impact now or in the imaginable future. We know
that <b> mostly means (strong) emphasis coupled with the idea of expressing
this by bolding, so it would be naive to process documents pretending we
don't know that.

Telephone and fax numbers would best be presented using the international
notation (as per CCITT/ITU-T E.123 recommendation), with a plus sign and a
country prefix and with no hyphens, e.g.
[phone]
On the WWW, a foreigner may visit your page.

Thank you, Jukka, you make a valid point about foreigners. If the boss
complains, I will point her to this post.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@physics.gla.ac.uk> scripsit:

We know that in theory, <b> can mean many different things for which
bold text is appropriate *except* strong emphasis, since, in theory,
if strong emphasis is meant, then the correct markup would be <strong>

Or maybe not. The theory - I mean HTML specifications when read with a mind
oriented towards semantic markup - says that <strong> means strong emphasis,
and this is probably how this element is used most of the time. The theory
does not say that all strong emphasis be marked up using <strong>. At least
it does not say this explicitly. In fact, it might be argued that a defining
occurrence of a term is by its nature something strongly emphatic, so that
<dfn> implicitly contains the semantics of <strong>. Headings surely have
emphasis by their nature, but we don't use <strong> for them. (Admittedly,
they are block elements, but we _could_ use <h1><strong>...</strong></h1> if
we thought that every strong emphasis needs <strong>.)

coupled with the idea of expressing this by bolding, so it would be
naive to process documents pretending we don't know that.

Uh-uh, it would be naive to pretend that 90 percent of everything
wasn't crud. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from that, however:
the saying about "billions of flies can't be wrong" comes
unappetisingly to mind.

Well, from billions of flies we _can_ draw the conclusion that a local
concentration of flies usually indicates the presence of something that
flies like.

Suppose that a speech-based user agent, or a character cell browser with no
bolding capability, is designed to render strong emphasis using alternation
in voice (higher, lower, slower - there are many possibilities) or change of
text color (e.g., from normal black to red). If it does that to <strong>,
should it do the same to <b>? Theoretically, it shouldn't, since it cannot
know what <b> means, beyond the author's wish to have it rendered in bold.
It should either ignore <b> or express the idea of bolding without actually
bolding, e.g. by speaking <b>foo</b> as "bold foo unbold" or displaying it
as "[bold]foo[end bolding]". In more than 90 % of cases, that would be
annoying, though it would probably convey the author's idea somehow.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Andreas Prilop]

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Alan J. Flavell wrote:

We know that in theory, <b> can mean many different things for which
bold text is appropriate *except* strong emphasis, since, in theory,
if strong emphasis is meant, then the correct markup would be <strong>

The symbols for vectors are usually printed boldface. Therefore,

<i><b>E</b></i>

could designate electric field strength.

[Andreas Prilop]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Suppose that a speech-based user agent, or a character cell browser with no
bolding capability, is designed to render strong emphasis using alternation
in voice (higher, lower, slower - there are many possibilities) or change of
text color (e.g., from normal black to red). If it does that to <strong>,
should it do the same to <b>? Theoretically, it shouldn't, since it cannot
know what <b> means, beyond the author's wish to have it rendered in bold.

Or think of typefaces without a bold font. We might think/hope/dream
that a browser chooses, say, underlining for <strong>, but nothing
at all for <b> rather than producing a "mock bold".

[Andreas Prilop]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, I wrote:

The symbols for vectors are usually printed boldface. Therefore,

<i><b>E</b></i>

could designate electric field strength.

I'm surprised to see that Netscape 4 recognizes <var> and displays
such text really in italics. So we should better write

<b><var>E</var></b>

for electric field strength - or perhaps

<var class=vector>E</var>

?