[whatwg] The m element

David Latapie david at empyree.org
Thu Feb 8 07:53:51 PST 2007


On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 10:23:33 -0500, Leons Petrazickis wrote:
> On 2/8/07, James Graham <jg307 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> In the Western world, the standard for highlighting is a neon yellow
> background. I submit that a much better name for <m> is <hi>
> (<hilite>, <highlite>, <highlight>). People don't necessarily mark
> text much -- if anything, "mark" implies underlining, circling, and
> drawing arrows -- but they do highlight. In university, I often saw
> students perched with their notes and a highlighter, marking important
> sections. The semantic meaning is to draw attention for later review.

My opinion. Of course, feel free to discard it entirely.

== <hi> is better than <m> ==
- is m/hi for highlighting? Or for marking future reference? Work notes 
(that I presently format with <tt>) and search highlight (à la Google) 
seem to be grouped together, whereas they are much different.

I much prefer <hi> than <m>, because the former is closer to the use. 
Mark may be understood as *id* (for anchors), as *comments*, or *work 
notes*. For instance:

"HTML was released in 1992 <m>check about the 1989 allegation</m>"

No such misunderstanding with <hi>

== hi is not necessary ==
What Google is doing is almost good (almost, because <strong> would be 
better here). The highlighted words are the important ones. 
Highlighting could be some kind of <emph value="+3">. Still, we are in 
the importance mindset. And students highlighting whole paragraphs are 
doing just that. Denoting importance.

Well, I summed up my feelings. I would be delighted to be convinced I'm 
wrong.
-- 
</david_latapie>             U+0F00
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