[whatwg] [web-apps] 2.7.8 The i element

[Henri Sivonen]

On Apr 16, 2005, at 17:53, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>>>
>>> Actually, <i> in HTML5 is currently defined as having specific
>>> semantics:
>>>
>>>    http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-i
>>
>> So does "i" now stand for "instance", instead of "italics"?
>
> At least until someone argues otherwise. :-)

Everybody knows it originally stands for "italic". Who would you fool 
by claiming it stood for something else? For browsers, and the element 
name is just a string. They don't care of English words. The default 
rendering will have to be italics anyway due to ample legacy content. 
No matter what to write in the spec, for all practical purposes <i> 
will mean "italic". I think acknowledging this would be in line with 
the descriptive approach the WHAT WG specs tend to take when it comes 
to features that have been already interoperably implemented.

What's the pseudo-semantic trickery good for? Will hard-line 
anti-presentationalists who spread false propaganda about <i> being 
deprecated suddenly embrace <i> if WHAT WG claims it stands for a 
different English word?

>> In that case, would you want to differentiate between ordinary titles
>> and real citations?  Or is that something that the class attribute 
>> could
>> handle, if needed?
>
> I don't know. What do people think?

I'd define <cite> meaning a title of work (not a person and not limited 
to quoted works).

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/