[wp-hackers] Post style buttons

[Elliotte Harold]

Robert Deaton wrote:

> Familiarity. Let's not go confuse the living crap out of the users who
> don't know that "strong" and "em" are apparently (but not really)
> synonyms for bold and italicize. 

Actually, I think strong and emphasis (or perhaps emphasize) would be 
fine names. em is a little unclear to someone who is a not a code-level 
HTML hacker. However there's no reason we have to use the same name on 
the button as in the code. We already use link instead of a.

> People are familiar with this method
> of textformatting from everywhere on their computers, from simple word
> processors to Microsoft Word to their mail clients to picking their
> font in any old application. The buttons as they are have meaning,
> let's not make them senseless to anyone who doesn't know their HTML
> tags.

The problem is the meaning they have is wrong. They say they insert bold 
and italic but instead they insert strong and em. :-(

> When I click those buttons, I have no intention of marking up my
> language as having emphasis.

Yet that is exactly what you do when you press those buttons. :-(

> If I was mentioning the title of a book,
> play, film, or other items, and wanted that to be italicized (or
> underlined, depending on preference), I don't want any sort of
> "emphasis" on the text, I just want it to be formatted differently.

This is why I proposed the span button. So we could easily add things 
like <span class='wordasword'>. For a play or film, perhaps there should 
be a cite button, though that may not be used frequently enough to 
justify it.


> If people want to markup their language and not their text, I think
> the buttons need to be separate. They are two separate tasks and they
> should not be jammed together into one button.


Agreed.


-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
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