[whatwg] <font> (was Support Existing Content)

[Adrian Sutton]

On 1/5/07 9:52 AM, "Sander Tekelenburg" <st at isoc.nl> wrote:
> At 15:01 -0700 UTC, on 2007-04-30, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> What's even more weird is the idea to consider content non-/conforming
> depending on how it was authored. I can't believe the implications of that
> were given serious thought. (Not to mention specifically granting wannabe
> 'WYSIWYG' editors special status. WYSIWYG has nothing to do with the Web --
> people wildly disagree over what "WYSIWYG" means in the context of the Web.
> So even if there is some sound argument behind allowing <font>, tying it to
> some undefined tool is useless -- at best everyone authoring <font> will
> bother to claim to be a WYSIWG editor.)

The only debate about what a WYSIWYG editor is on the web is between a very
strict interpretation (it must look precisely like what you get) and the
What You See Is What You Mean editors. The term WYSIWYG really shouldn't be
a concern for any reasonable person reading the spec. I've been working in
this area for around 6 years now and I've never met anyone even
semi-technical that didn't immediately understand the term WYSIWYG and know
what it meant in terms of HTML editors.

If you outlaw the <font> tag, you'll just get <span style="font-family:
..."> instead which has no more semantic benefit and is far more difficult
to work with. That said, in general I recommend configuring the editor so it
doesn't have a font menu and use predefined CSS styles instead, but few
people ever take that advice.

Regards,

Adrian Sutton.
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