[thelist] Non-Deprecated HTML Presentational Elements (was, C SS Font Sizes)

Aylard JA (James) jaylard at equilon.com
Wed Feb 28 10:42:09 CST 2001


Martin,

> * Deprecating them wouldn't immediately stop all the browsers in the world
>   using them, only new browsers (maybe) that are early enough in their
devt
>   cycle

	I think you might have misunderstood my post. The bulleted points
that I included were simply a paraphrase of various comments, posted on the
W3C www-html list, which argued against deprecating fontstyle elements such
as <b> and <i>. I *disagreed* with those arguments.
	Regardless, I don't view the deprecation of elements as a means of
preventing browsers from rendering them. Deprecation is really more of a
philosophical statement (most browsers will continue to render deprecated
elements for a long, long time -- if not forever). It is part of an effort
to reassert the structural purpose of HTML, and minimize the presentational
aspects of it which by and large are a corruption of the original intent for
it (and which now belong primarily to CSS). It's also an argument for
consistency: it is inconsistent to deprecate <u>, but not <i> and <b>. All
fontstyle elements should have been deprecated, IMO.

> * For foreign languages, you should use <span lang="fr"> to define
structure
>    (screen readers should then pronounce the (say) French correctly), and
>    add a class for "foreign" if the italicisation really matters

	Yes, I agree. The argument to use <i> for this purpose was one of
those from the W3C mailing list with which I disagreed.
	If I've misunderstood your points, please clarify. Thanks.

James Aylard




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