Aw: Re: HTML entities

[Harriet Riddle]

Several originally presentational elements have been re-defined in HTML5 as having vague semantics distinct from just a styled span, but also distinct from any similarly styled semantic elements; those which could not be were deprecated.  This applies to more than just sup/sub, e.g. <i> is treated as a vague differentiated, but not emphasised, voice, such as commentary or a character's thoughts, et cetera.

This has some interesting effects: <small> has been interpreted as a deëmphasis and is still valid, while the accompanying <big> is deprecated since it could not be given a consistent distinctive semantic (e.g., headings should use heading elements).

—Har.
________________________________
From: Unicode <unicode-bounces at unicode.org> on behalf of Marius Spix via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2021 5:44:10 PM
To: christoph.paeper at crissov.de <christoph.paeper at crissov.de>
Cc: unicode at unicode.org <unicode at unicode.org>
Subject: Fw: Aw: Re: HTML entities

I did some further research: The WHATWG spec differs from the Mozilla definition. It lists <sup> and <sup> in the text-level semantics section and states:

> These elements must be used only to mark up typographical conventions with specific meanings, not for typographical presentation for presentation's sake.
> The sub element can be used inside a var element, for variables that have subscripts.

See also: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/text-level-semantics.html#the-sub-and-sup-elements

Rergards,

Marius Spix

Gesendet: Montag, 22. März 2021 um 18:37 Uhr
Von: "Marius Spix" <marius.spix at web.de>
An: christoph.paeper at crissov.de
Cc: unicode at unicode.org
Betreff: Aw: Re: HTML entities
Dear Christoph,

according to Mozilla [1],

> The <sup> element should only be used for typographical reasons—that is, to change the position of the text to comply > with typographical conventions or standards, rather than solely for presentation or appearance purposes.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/sup

Regards,

Marius Spix


Gesendet: Montag, 22. März 2021 um 18:17 Uhr
Von: "Christoph Päper via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org>
An: unicode at unicode.org
Betreff: Re: HTML entities
Marius Spix via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org>:
>
> CSS is also no solution, because <sub> and <sub> are semantic tags (like <del>, <strong>, <em> and <kbd>) and not just stylistic ones (like <s>, <b>, <i> or <tt>).

When HTML introduced the `b`/`strong` and `i`/`em` distinctions, it should also have added presentational/semantic pairs

- `sup`/`exp` (exponent) or `pow` (power) and
- `sub`/`idx`, `ind` (index) or `base`.

I don’t think the WHATWG or W3C would be interested in adding them now.

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