[whatwg] Web Forms 2.0 - what does it extend , definition of same,

[James Graham]

Jim Ley wrote:

>On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 20:36:39 +1300, Matthew Thomas <mpt at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 10 Jan, 2005, at 12:51 PM, Jim Ley wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>...
>>>Current web applications use HTML almost exclusively as a rendering
>>>language, they're not even using the document semantics available in
>>>HTML, it's just script and CSS dangling off of the HTML elements you
>>>need.
>>>      
>>>
>>Sure. If Web applications were semantic they'd need HTML block elements
>>such as <login>, <register>, <order>, and <post>. 
>>    
>>
>
>We have all agreed HTML only has document semantics so
>web-applications can never do more.  However I was meaning they don't
>use strong/em, or p, or hn etc. So the HTML that is rendered is almost
>semantically empty for example most web-mail products don't put the
>title of the email in an Hn, this is what GMail thinks
>
><DIV id=tt><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: larger"><B>Re: [whatwg] Web Forms
>2.0 - what does it extend , definition of same,</B></SPAN>
>  
>
As I mentioned previously, HTML produced by Google is usually terrible. 
I have no idea why this should be, perhaps you'd like to take it up with 
them. However the existance of non-semantic uses of HTML only proves 
that these are possible in the language, not that well written examples 
are not common. I would expect that in *any* language one could, with 
the necessary determination or laziness create a non-semantic mess from 
semantic elements.