Re: XHTML 1.0 validator at W3C

Sorry, Jesse, I'm not convinced that does anything but prove my point.

There's nothing to say the thing we call a "paragraph" should appear as a
block of text with at least one (usually two, for easier reading) new lines.
A paragraph was invented to group ideas in the text and allow the reader to
step from one logical (one hopes) piece of reasoning to the next. Therefore,
the "p" element is definately semantic in nature.

If, for semantic reasons, I was indicating that a block of text was a
"subsection of [the] current paragraph", as you suggest, then I would not be
using an empty element. Perhaps <psub>text</psub> or
<subsection>text</subsection>.

The very fact that the "br" element is called "line break" is explicitly
saying what the document should 'look' like when rendered - that is, "break
the line here". The "br" is therefore for layout only.

One of the major reasons for XHTML is to remove all presentational markup
and replace it "with some stylesheet work", as you say.

Nevertheless, it's there and I'm sure it will be there for a while. I was
just wondering if there was a compelling reason why it was in the Strict
DTD.

Thanks,
Josh.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jesse Houwing" <j.houwing(at)student.utwente.nl>
To: "Joshua Graham" <JoshuaGraham(at)grahamis.com>
Cc: <hwg-xml(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 12:41 AM
Subject: Re: XHTML 1.0 validator at W3C


> Joshua Graham wrote:
>
> >I'm surprised that the "br" element is part of the Strict DTD then, as
it's
> >surely presentation markup.
> >
> >I tried to see if it was discussed in the HTML list at w3c but their
search
> >wasn't working. Does anyone know why it was included or an argument as to
> >how it's somehow semantic and not for just presentation purposes?
> >
> You could have written the above text as follows (note the missing empty
> line) :
>
> >I'm surprised that the "br" element is part of the Strict DTD then, as
it's
> >surely presentation markup.
> >I tried to see if it was discussed in the HTML list at w3c but their
search
> >wasn't working. Does anyone know why it was included or an argument as to
> >how it's somehow semantic and not for just presentation purposes?
> >
> In that case you would've used the <br> instead if the <P> to show that
> not a new paragraph but a new subsection of you current paragraph has
> started.
>
> I know it is possible to do this with some stylesheet work, but the <br>
> would be the right piece of code to use.
>
> Jesse
>
>
>

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