FW: HTML rules and poetry

Sent from my Phone
From: don kretz
Sent: 11/28/2012 11:29 PM
To: Lee Passey
Subject: RE: HTML rules and poetry
I would pass it along but I wouldn't dare. I tried exactly that and got
this as a typical response:

<pre> (or white-space: pre) is a very bad idea. [i]Very[/i] bad. Period.

To wide acclaim.

And had my post excised from the conversation as "off topic."

And accused of being too "philosophical" - apparently one of their
strongest pejoratives.

Not an open-minded group I'm afraid.

Keep in mind those Best Practices are a fait-accompli imposition by a
small group hand-picked by the GM who tends not to react well to
disagreement or talking about reasons for things (philosophy).

Sent from my Phone
From: Lee Passey
Sent: 11/28/2012 2:52 PM
To: don kretz
Subject: HTML rules and poetry
I've been working on the section of my HTML rules which apply to poems.
Of course, I've been comparing my thoughts to the new "HTML Best
Practices" at DP, as I believe that consistency is more important than
absolute correctness. I have a few comments that I would like you to
convey to whomever is the primary author of the poetry "Case Study."

According to the best definitions I can find online, poetry is a
composition generally involving emotional or lofty thoughts expressed in
imaginative words. Verse is any expression in words which simply
conforms to accepted metrical rules and structure. A poem is simply
poetry in verse.

Thus, when one encounters a poem in source materials I prefer
classifying it as

<tag class='poem'>

instead of

<tag class='poetry'>

It seems to me that in books we usually encounter "poems" not "poetry,"
so the former classification seems more accurate. Further, a cursory
look at current HTML practice at PG seems to indicate that
"class='poem'" is more commonly used than "class='poetry'"; prior
practice should not bind us, but we should let it guide us.

Secondly, when poems are encountered which have varying indentations of
lines the "Case Study" recommends enclosing each line in a <div> with
varying classifications as to how far that particular line should be
indented (e.g. <div class="indent1">, <div class="indent2">, etc.).

I dislike using classifications to indicate style instead of semantics,
especially when the classifications have no global meaning outside of
the specific text. But even more important is the overarching goal that
presentation should be preserved, as much as possible, even when a style
sheet is lost, or a User Agent has a poor implementation of CSS.

In HTML, (including HTML5) the W3C suggests that the <pre> element is
the preferred method of marking poems. A common hack is to not use the
<pre> element, but to do indentation with a variable number of
non-breaking spaces. I can't say I'm particularly enamored with either
of these solutions, but they do both have the virtue that the desired
effect is preserved when CSS is lost.

In the end, I think I would follow the W3C and use:

<pre class="poem">

The classification is added so that CSS-aware User Agents can override
the default presentation of <pre> if desired.
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