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

[Joe Crawford]

"Aylard JA (James)" wrote:
>         Further to the question of why the W3C did not deprecate all
> presentational elements (or "fontstyle" elements in the DTD, e.g., <b> and
> <i>), I did find a thread in the W3C www-html mailing list archives that
> addresses this:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1997Dec/0028.html
> 
>         Honestly, the logic behind the arguments presented in that post and
> some that follow escapes me. The argument, basically, is this:
> 
> * These elements are so commonly used that "to get rid of them would be
> dangerous".
> 
> * They aren't always presentational, but are sometimes structural, such as
> when presenting foreign-language terms within English text. (Sounds rather
> presentational to me.)
> 
>         I don't know whether these arguments reflect the thinking of W3C's
> HTML working group, or just that of outside observers, but it's not very
> convincing IMO.

The essential nature of the HTML specs (if I may take a shot at them) is
that they are a moving target, not made on purely academic guidelines.
Actual usage is taken into account, and many things that stay around
stay because of this. This argument remains. If you seek didactic and
intellectual purity - don't look at w3c specs, particularly not the HTML
ones. :-)

The idea is to meld theory and practice, considering practice and theory
are *both* moving targets in actual use, what choice do they have?

NOTE: The above is pure speculation. Do not operate heavy machinery
while reading the above.

	- joe <http://artlung.com/>
--
Joe Crawford ||||||||||||||       mailto:jcrawford at avencom.com
||||||||||||||||||||||||             http://www.avencom.com
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||      Avencom: Set Your Sites Higher