[whatwg] The m element

Charles McCathieNevile chaals at opera.com
Sat Feb 10 04:50:45 PST 2007


On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:16:57 +0530, Jens Brueckmann <jens.brueckmann at gmail.com> 
wrote:

>> To my mind a flag denotes a single point somewhere in the document
>> and does not denote a range. So I associate it with the real-world
>> analogy of a flag placed somewhere in the document. So I am not an
>> advocate of <flag>
>
> I see what you mean.
> I am in the process of trying to grasp what highlighting acually is.
> For me it is something different from plain emphasis, although it does
> sort of emphasise a passage of text. So what do you think about
> something along the line of ATTN, meaning "attention"?

As far as I understand it, it means something very like emphasis. Expecting 
people to read the spec for things that have a clear and distinct meaning hasn't 
worked before, so why would we expect it to work now in the case of a fine 
semantic distinction?

I think there are lots of ways of splitting the hairs that define the difference, 
but I don't see that the element is worth adding. And I am a native english 
speaker trying to understand the differences. I can only guess at what those 
people I work with who speak dreadful english are going to make of it. I guess 
it could become the google element (if that is the example), or just an optional 
variant of em (in the same way that strong is often used now).

Cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
chaals at opera.com Try Opera 9.1 http://opera.com



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