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Number of posts in this thread: 7 (In chronological order)

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Thu, Oct 28 2010 1:33PM
Subject: HTML5 and new elements (was Re: Use of SAMP to highlight search results)
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On 28/10/2010 20:15, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
>
>> I'd say the "mark" element sounds more appropriate
>
> Within HTML5, yes. But HTML5 is an incomplete draft, or set of drafts,
> expected to be finalized maybe around year 2020.

Ok, apologies...I spend too much time recently in HTML5 land, and
realised afterwards that the thread starter didn't actually say "in HTML5".

However, to pick up on your last part...don't regard HTML5 as something
that is unusable until 2020 or whatever. Heck, CSS2.1 isn't finalised
yet either, and we seem to be using it quite happily as well. Rollout of
features is incremental, rather than a big bang wow now browsers support
HTML5.

> Moreover, the MARK element
> does not imply any particular rendering or other processing, in the browsers
> that recognize it.

It will be up to browsers to decide if they do want to provide it with a
default styling or not. Currently, not all browsers even have the HTML5
parsing algorithm running, though, so you're correct in that they won't
do anything special with MARK, just as with any other unrecognised element.

> It's a bad idea, if you ask me, to define an element for
> a certain kind of emphasis without saying that it should be rendered
> emphatically - the idea seems to be that authors will style it, naturally
> routinely ignoring non-visual browsing, among other things.

Again, it's up to browsers to decide if there will be a default styling.
At the moment, there isn't (for most of the new HTML5 elements)

Anyway, I digress,

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Oct 28 2010 2:18PM
Subject: Re: HTML5 and new elements (was Re: Use of SAMP to highlight search results)
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Patrick H. Lauke wrote:

> Again, it's up to browsers to decide if there will be a default styling.

And my point was that this is bad, one of the threats to accessibility in
HTML5.

The good old HTML specifications even said that browsers _must_ render EM
and STRONG elements differently from each other and from normal text. And
that's what browsers generally do, though non-visual browsers may deviate
from this, for partly understandable reasons.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Thu, Oct 28 2010 3:33PM
Subject: Re: HTML5 and new elements (was Re: Use of SAMP to highlight search results)
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On 28/10/2010 21:16, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
>
>> Again, it's up to browsers to decide if there will be a default styling.
>
> And my point was that this is bad, one of the threats to accessibility in
> HTML5.
>
> The good old HTML specifications even said that browsers _must_ render EM
> and STRONG elements differently from each other and from normal text.

All I can find in that regard is this under
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1

"EM and STRONG are used to indicate emphasis. [...] The presentation of
phrase elements depends on the user agent. Generally, visual user agents
present EM text in italics and STRONG text in bold font."

> And
> that's what browsers generally do, though non-visual browsers may deviate
> from this, for partly understandable reasons.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Oct 28 2010 11:18PM
Subject: Re: HTML5 and new elements (was Re: Use of SAMP to highlight search results)
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Patrick H. Lauke wrote:

>> The good old HTML specifications even said that browsers _must_
>> render EM and STRONG elements differently from each other and from
>> normal text.
>
> All I can find in that regard is this under
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1
>
> "EM and STRONG are used to indicate emphasis. [...] The presentation
> of phrase elements depends on the user agent. Generally, visual user
> agents present EM text in italics and STRONG text in bold font."

The _good old_ specification is HTML 2.0, which says:

"User agents must render highlighted phrases distinctly from plain text.
Additionally, EM content must be rendered as distinct from STRONG content,
and B content must rendered as distinct from I content."
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_5.html#SEC5.7

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Fri, Oct 29 2010 7:39AM
Subject: Re: HTML5 and new elements (was Re: Use of SAMP to highlight search results)
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Jukka, in theory, is it really necessary for user agents to render these various tags in different ways, or would it be enough in some instances to simply recognize the tags and be able to find them on request?

I'm thinking, for example, of when italics are used for the titles books or other references. For another example, consider the use of italics for taxonomic classifications in biology. In either case, the visual styling is not so much to make the terms stand apart from the words around them as to make them easy to locate on skimming.

After all, it wouldn't be particularly useful to a person using a screen reader to hear some unique vocal characteristic each time a title or taxonomic term is mentioned. In fact, I'd find it distracting to hear a change in pitch or tone with each E. coli or The Taming of the Shrew. What would be useful is to find the next taxonomic term, so I could quickly get to the part where the author finally mentions E. coli or hear a list of titles so I could quickly discover which works are mentioned in an essay titled "The Essential Comedies of Shakespeare."

It seems that a user agent could meet that need by simply recognizing the tags (and, in this case, unique attributes) and then locating or listing tagged terms on request.

-Cliff

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

>The _good old_ specification is HTML 2.0, which says:

>"User agents must render highlighted phrases distinctly from plain text.
>Additionally, EM content must be rendered as distinct from STRONG content,
>and B content must rendered as distinct from I content."
>http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_5.html#SEC5.7


Cliff Tyllick
Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512/239-4516
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

From: Pete Fairhurst
Date: Mon, Nov 01 2010 5:54AM
Subject: Re: Use of SAMP to highlight search results
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Thanks, everyone, for your insights. Interesting stuff.

I'm working on two markup frameworks for our chosen CMSs at the moment; one
is XHTML and the other will be HTML5. I think I'll switch the XHTML search
results template to use STRONG for now, then look at the HTML5 options in
more detail once we're happy with the XHTML code.

Hopefully, HTML5 will be more solid by then. It looks like there could be
some more really useful additional elements I've not seen before in HTML5.

- Pete

~~~~

"Haste in art is almost always vulgarisation." H.G. Wells

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Mon, Nov 01 2010 12:03PM
Subject: Re: HTML5 and new elements (was Re: Use of SAMP to highlight search results)
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Cliff Tyllick wrote:

> Jukka, in theory, is it really necessary for user agents to render
> these various tags in different ways,

In practice, I and B tags mostly mean the same as EM and STRONG, namely some
kind of emphasis. An author who uses them expects them to display as italic
or as bold, respectively, or (speaking more abstractly) in some other
special way. It would be incorrect to ignore such markup, just as it would
be incorrect to ignore punctuation in text or heading markup.

> I'm thinking, for example, of when italics are used for the titles
> books or other references.

Then the logical author uses CITE. But if the uses I (or even EM) markup,
then a poor browser has no real way of knowing that in this particular case,
the markup does not mean emphasis. As a whole, it is safer to assume that I
and EM markup always mean emphasis than to ignore them.

> For another example, consider the use of
> italics for taxonomic classifications in biology.

This is something that we would need special markup for, but in the absence
of it, the I markup has to do - for genus and species and subspecies names.
As the names are special scientific names, in Latinized form, often in
parentheses or otherwise outside normal running text, it is not particularly
harmful to treat them as if they were emphasized.

> In either case, the
> visual styling is not so much to make the terms stand apart from the
> words around them as to make them easy to locate on skimming.

Italics doesn't make it particularly easy to locate expressions on skimming,
especially when sans-serif fonts are used, as people usually use on web
pages. The purpose of italics is often just to "set aside" some text,
distinguishing it from base text - not on skimming but on reading.

> After all, it wouldn't be particularly useful to a person using a
> screen reader to hear some unique vocal characteristic each time a
> title or taxonomic term is mentioned.

It depends. If the text mentions, say, the unknown soldier, it might be
essential whether the generic concept is meant or whether a book called "The
unknown soldier" is referred to. In the latter case, the author might choose
to use quotation marks, or CITE element. Some unique vocal characteristic
would probably increase the odds of correct understanding in the latter
case.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/