Re: Pandering to poor authorship (was Proposing <indent> vs. <blockquote>)

Dylan Smith wrote:
> Maybe there's a place for <indent>. My initial knee-jerk is that it's a
> purely presentational element, without any structural meaning. It doesn't
> take long to type <div class="indent">.
>   
FYI, those are apples and oranges.  <indent> as proposed would have a 
default margin/padding/border/whatever whereas <div class="indent"> has 
no such default.

Why that matters is that those who have access to only the content but 
not the CSS file (I'm assuming inline CSS is too complex and requires 
too much repetition) can gain a presentational indent with <indent> but 
not with <div class="indent">.

People are, more and more, able to author snippets of HTML to be 
incorporated into an existing HTML structure, and not just entire HTML 
documents.  We need to recognize that emergent use-case and their 
applicable needs.

> But I'm open to convincing on <indent>. I'd like to hear some other's
> thoughts on it. Either way, the standard should be a bit more explicit about
> what is and what isn't proper usage.
>   
+1
>>> Ever tried to CSS a site someone else structured poorly?  
>>>       
>> Yes :( Just recently: a Joomla based site (urgh) with terrible structure
>> and existing poor CSS; and the Mailman web interface [double urgh]) ;)
>>     
Me too! BTW, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get bullets 
and proper indentation to show up with <li> in blog content using the 
default theme for Wordpress (example: [1]).  Grrrr (I know, I've just 
not spent a requisite "all afternoon" to figure it out.)

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
http://atlanta-web.org - http://t.oolicio.us

[1] 
http://blog.welldesignedurls.org/2007/03/30/why-url-design-matters-in-email/

P.S. As an aside, I happen to believe that CSS is one of the worst poxes 
ever to be hoisted on the web (not CSS in theory, but in its 
implementation.)

Received on Saturday, 14 April 2007 06:31:40 UTC