[whatwg] Phrasing semantics feedback omnibus

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> This is an area that has had some research done:
> 
>    http://24ways.org/2006/marking-up-a-tag-cloud
>    http://microformats.org/wiki/tagcloud-brainstorming
> 
> I don't really see a compelling answer yet, and frankly tag clouds as a 
> whole aren't really so important that we need dedicated markup. So I 
> haven't put anything in the spec about it yet.
> 
> Generally I would recommend something like the 24ways proposal:

So would I. :)

> If people think all this is worth mentioning in the spec, I can add it. 
> Let me know.

Given how many worse ways I see tag clouds marked up, I think it would
be a great idea. The more good markup patterns in the spec (and the 
authoring guide) the better, and both of the patterns you mention are 
preferable to nested EM or bare SPANs.

> Media independence is what we're going for here. <font>, for example, 
> isn't media-independent.

As I think I've pointed out before, "i" for ship names and taxonomical 
names isn't particularly media independent: they are italicised in 
English print and English braille tends to mirror such conventions[*], 
but they aren't particularly differentiated when speaking, whereas a 
dream sequence might well be. Small potatoes - it's not like this 
discrepancy is likely to cause problems for people (and it's at least an 
improvement on using CITE for ship names!) - but there it is.

[*] For American and British English braille, see 
http://www.brl.org/ebae/rule02.html and 
http://www.bauk.org.uk/docs/bbnew.pdf

Note especially (from the later):

"Where print uses the two sorts of inverted commas to make an essential
distinction, as for example between spoken dialogue and thoughts, 
braille should follow suit.

"However, if print uses italics to indicate thoughts, braille should 
adopt this practice."

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis