[whatwg] De-emphasis

Mikko Rantalainen mikko.rantalainen at peda.net
Fri Feb 9 05:52:42 PST 2007


David Latapie wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:58:35 +0200, Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
>> ignore and is usually orthogonal to the rest of the content. <small> 
>> is something you usually skip but you must be aware of the content 
>> (e.g. a copyright or license boilerplate) - the key here is that the 
>> content is often repeated but if you have read it *once*, then you 
>> may skip it later.
> 
> So, if I understanf you correctly, <small> is short for "important 
> legalse-like SMALL-print" and not just "SMALL-text">, right?

That's pretty much what the current WHATWG spec says:
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-small

The latest HTML specification of small element 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/graphics.html#h-15.2.1) only says
"15.2.1 Font style elements: the TT, I, B, BIG, SMALL, STRIKE, S, and U 
elements" and "SMALL: Renders text in a 'small' font". So either <small> 
has no semantics at all (and should be dropped) or it has semantics 
defined by WHATWG (which seems to describe the current usage in the wild).

-- 
Mikko



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