text to html (1 of 2)

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Luke:

Luke Davis writes:
> 
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, Janina Sajka wrote:
> 
> > > ... 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.
> 
> In part, yes.  In main, however, no.  You stated, in a very wide bit of
> generalness, that <pre> should not be used.  Not that, as you seem to say
> with the one line comment above semi agreeing with Sina's comments, that a
> designer can use it, if they act responsibly, or that, at least, the idea
> of he/she acting responsibly, is the thrust of this discussion.  It
> isn't.  The thrust of the debate, as far as I am concerned, is the blanket
> denial that <pre> has any value, and the seeming opinion that it should
> never be used, even in emergencies, which this use was.

I have not seen a good example of appropriate use of the <pre> tag. In
particular, I have not seen one mentioned on this list during this
debate. And, to be more precise, every use I did see mentioned would
easily fall outside of "appropriate use" as I read everything and
anything I can find on the W3C site about this tag.

Furthermore, I cannot agree that there is any emergency justification
for which <pre> is an appropriate stopgap. Most especially, I cannot
agree with that when the emergency seems to be a recurring situation--an
inference I draw from the use of the present progressive when
"emergency" was first brought up on this thread.

> I, as Sina, still dispute that idea, although I may not, after I read your
> ATC.
> 
> > > 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
> 
> As Janina, I have to disagree with that statement, at least in form.  Her
> examples of <p>, etc., were enough to prove the point.  What I think you
> were getting at, is that any element can be incorrectly used, or used in
> such a way as to defeat its value, and make it more of a liability.
> The thought here, however, seems to be, that <pre>, not only has no value,
> but is an automatic liability, no matter what the circumstance.

I believe I have demonstrated that it is. Which is not to say that there
may not be appropriate uses, but even the old examples of appropriate
use in the HTML struct guidelines appear to have been overcome by better
coding strategies--the example being the specific legally constrained
suggested use in the email thread referenced in my document.

To reiterate, I do see it as an automatic liability. The level of
liability grows the more content is enclosed within the tags, i.e. a
short sentence or two is not as aggregious as an entire catalog.

Suffice it to say that <pre> is old. Whilst it continues to appear in
the public drafts for xhtml 2.0, I did also find discussion on the W3C's
lists about dropping it entirely. I did not reference that in my
document simply because I have attempted to stick to established usage
and analysis criteria. Therefore, I evaluated <pre> against WCAG 1.0
even though it's from 1999, and not the current public draft of WCAG
2.0, which is still only a draft.

				Janina