[wp-hackers] Post style buttons

[Andy Skelton]

I'm going to try and prevent another presentation-versus-semantics
debate. There is no point in going there. Each is important to
different people at different times. However, we are all concerned
with presentation at one time or another. The point of the rich editor
is to let people control presentation (not semantics!) in a way that
they have probably already learned. The B and I buttons are going to
be around for a while yet.

There is a B button because people want to make bold text (not strong
text). The B tag is perfect when serving HTML but we're moving away
from HTML. The STRONG tag has been generally okay in practice but for
reasons already discussed it's not perfect. The remaining solutions
are based in CSS.

There have been discussions about standardizing on a small number of
CSS classes such as .bold and .italic but no solution has come from
this. I would avoid standardized classes because they are fragile.

CSS can also be applied as attributes. SPAN tags are intended for
exactly this kind of scenario. Why not go this route?

To save the inevitable bandwidth-pincher some bandwidth, let me point
out that style="font-weight:bold" is slightly longer than
class="bold". There, your argument is made. Now consider that the
simplicity of using style attributes alleviates the many complexities
introduced when classes are standardized via an additional stylesheet
or any other method.

Andy