b and i

[Fred Condo]

On May 14, 2004, at 5:20 PM, Aaron Swartz wrote:

>> <p>She has a certain <span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">je ne sais 
>> quoi</lang>.</p>
>
[snip]

> Here’s what I used in my original example:
>
> <i lang="fr">je ne sais quoi</i>
>

I've created a monumentally simple test page here:

http://tincture.us/absinthe/static/aaron.html
http://tincture.us/absinthe/static/aaron.css

> These two options have exactly the same semantics. The only difference 
> is that [your] version doesn’t work in Internet Explorer for Windows.

Broken browser. Yes, yes, I know. But using i intermingles presentation 
with semantics, and I'm trying to be a purist here. It doesn't work in 
this browser, but it degrades gracefully.

>  Or in Internet Explorer for Mac.

Irrelevant browser (abandoned by its maker and supplanted by Safari). 
Safari does not work with my samples either.

>  Or in Opera in User Mode. Or in Mozilla with Basic Page Style 
> selected. Or in Firefox with Basic Theme selected. Or in Lynx.
>

I don't even have Opera, but of course I take your word for it.

My way maintains the division between appearance and semantics, and is 
forward-compatible. Should Markdown care about this distinction? No. 
This discussion is rather far afield from Markdown. So I reiterate what 
I wrote before: it should be easy to get i and b in Markdown because 
usability is nice and people should be able to avoid markup that's 
plain nonsense. Now I'll be quiet, because I'm sure this topic has been 
exhausted, and only overwhelmingly convincing evidence will make me 
change my mind about that exhaustion or the theoretical underpinnings 
of the topic.