text to html (1 of 2)

Sun Aug 31 18:01:07 EDT 2003

Hi, Sina:

Just a few points. I will edit your post, and add my comments preceded
by js:

Also, since my original reply was bounced by the list, I've had to split my
reply into two messages.

Sina Bahram writes:
> 
> First of all, great job on your exhaustive documentation of the issue.

JS: Thanks. Hope its useful.
> 
> I was using personal experience as a support and definitely not a soul
> support or even as the basis of my judgement or analysis of the pre
> element tag and it's accessibility or lack there of. 
JS: Well, OK, but I had only your words to go on. Maybe this exchange is
just another example of how phrases like "in my experience," and "for
me" have crept into people's usage over the years.

> I also did not say
> that it was ok to use this tag in the form of
> <html><body><pre>content</pre></body></html> for the site, as I backed
> up with a follow up email. I don't have the quote on me but it went
> something like this if you read it.

JS: I don't believe I said that you said any such thing.

JS: Actually, I don't believe I named anyone in my document.

> 
> I can help you get a temporary site up, while using some pre element
> tags, I can get a better site up in your time constraint and then also
> work with you on totally erasing all <pre> element tags and moving over
> to style sheets or something that would fit more with your needs and
> accessibility requirements.

JS: Yes, I remember that message, and I still have it, actually.

	>Also, I wanted to state
> that the w3c doesn't seem to be directly discouraging the use of this
> tag through any documents I have chanced to read.

JS: Well, I certainly have no knowledge of what you may have chanced to
read. But, I did provide two examples, one directly from the WCAG 1.0
document, that discouraged use of this tag. Perhaps you'd like to review
those two examples?

> It seems to be
> discouraging certain principals and practices which you aptly compare to
> the pre element tag.i

JS: Yes, the guidelines begin with principles which are then applied to
specific markup. If you familiarize yourself with any of them, I think
it will soon become clear that this is standard procedure. 

> ... you keep stating that it would disrupt the accessibility
> to...for example *people who have difficulties understanding large
> blocks of text*
> 
> Well, it is the designer's responsibility to not use it in this fashion.
i
JS: Clearly. I thought that's what we were talking about.

> As any tag, even stylesheets or any other element can be exhaustively
> and ridiculously overused, so can the pre element tag. I wanted to know
> a specific example if you would? Maybe by looking at the page that
> resulted from this email thread to begin with? I would love to hear your
> feed back on that precise page, 

JS: Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "overused." I'm not sure how one
might overuse <p>, or <li>< etc. 

JS: By the way, I don't believe this thread ever mentioned a specific
page where <pre> had been used. If it did, I missed it. Please provide,
and I'll go take a look. I believe the thread began when someone asked
for a tool to make html out of text, which I took to mean plain text, as
in ASCII. Since this would, of necessity, require adding semantic and
structural value where little, if any, was present in the original, I
took strong exception to both the notion and the quality of markup any
such tool might create. I still take exception to those. I believe one
folk phrase that might illustrate this would be "You can't get silk from
a sow's ear."

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