[thelist] Coding standards.... [headers]

Barney Carroll barney at textmatters.com
Mon Dec 11 09:26:46 CST 2006


Forgive me for saying so... But it's almost as if we're trying to decide 
for ourselves what these things might be from a vacuum and the guidance 
of w3c... What about books? Seriously, the culture of literature is a 
massive thing with plenty of examples - memory can join hands with idle 
theory!

<h1>Putting HTML in context</h1>
<p>In this chapter we will look at the ontology of markup languages from 
SGML to present day XML and XHTML. It is important, before we delve into 
a history of the 'ML', to draw attention to two key recent conceptions 
which must be made distinct in order to better understand the world 
without them.</p>

<h3>The Document Object Model</h3>
<p>The Document Object Model (DOM) took a long while to cement itself as 
the key method for browser clients to treat markup, and in turn it took 
a strong role in shaping how developers and authors thought of 
extensible markup.</p>
<p>It is, however, only a recent model for processing markup, and even 
at level 1 was not as malleable as we now rely on it being.</p>

<h3>DHTML</h3>
<p>DHTML (Dynamic HyperText Markup Language) has fallen out of use as a 
term recently - for good reasons. It is not a markup language proper in 
the sense that XHTML, HTML and XML are distinct - rather DHTML 
represents the use of HTML, CSS and ECMAscript (more commonly known as 
javascript) - but its implication, even of the division of such 
languages, is very significant to the way attitudes to markup differed 
before and after its inception.</p>

<h2>SGML: The beginning of everything</h2>
<p>The notion of Markup Languages as we know them - that is to say...

...

'Emergency'... 'level of importance'... Strange terms. A header is a 
header. I'm no professor of English but I'm very concerned at how 
abstract these perfectly ingrained human terms seem to be...

Regards,
Barney

Julian Rickards wrote:
> I don't look at heading level as a degree of importance but rather as a
> summary of what is discussed following the heading. H2 is no more important
> than H3 and so on, it is just that H2 covers a broader topic (not
> necessarily longer either) than H3 which is more focussed.
> 
> Other than an ordered list, I don't know that HTML provides for degrees of
> importance.
> 
> Recognize that my opinions are just that, opinions and I am willing to be
> convinced differently: to date, this hasn't yet happened but I am pleased to
> see this being discussed.
> 
> Jules
> 
> On 11/12/06, Lee kowalkowski <lee.kowalkowski at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> But this is just a traditional semantic view.  It may be feasible in
>> another design for the different heading levels to have an alternative
>> semantic meaning, e.g., level 1 = Emergency Notices, level 2 = Warning
>> Notices, level 3 = Information Notices.



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