[thelist] semantic markup

Tim Beadle tsb at wigner.ioppublishing.com
Wed Jun 2 07:52:23 CDT 2004


On Wed, Jun 02, 2004 at 03:13:15PM +0200, Manuel González Noriega wrote:
> I was trying to state that, if there's no appropiate tag available, one
> should default to span+id/class.

I happen to disagree. I cannot see any semantic difference between 
<span class="supposedly-meaningful-classname">word</span> and <b>word</b>,
except the latter uses less bandwidth.

I agree with Matthew Thomas [0,1]. I'm sure that you don't. I'm not saying that 
I'm right, but until someone can demonstrate the semantic benefit of using 
<span class="whatever">, I will advocate using <b> or <i> *for situations 
where no suitable semantic element exists*.

You don't go making up elements and expect a semantic-data-extractor to make 
sense of it, do you? So why invent arbitrary "meaningful" class and id names?

Tim

[0] http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i
[1] http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/09/semantic
-- 
"On my way to the office I passed an old lady who appeared to be muttering to 
herself, and it struck me: I can no longer tell the difference between insane 
people, and people on hands-free mobile phones. Literally. I have no idea if 
she was on the phone or not." - Ian Hickson


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