I have assumed that deprecation is (hopefully) the 'elemental' road to
oblivion. I've also assumed that previously deprecated elements were
either rarely used (eg. DIR, MENU) and/or had fatal SGML flaws
(XMP, LISTING? -- were they commonly used -- I do not know). B,I
and TT are very heavily used, which led me to believe they would be
very difficult to steer towards elimination.
Ideally FONT with an attribute would be better, but I just don't think
it is possible to go back and put this right. And if it is not possible,
then I would not support having two elements (e.g. <FONT STYLE="bold"> and
<B> ) that mean the same thing.
> > [...]
> > This is a nontrivial debate, considering the types of things Netscape has
> > tried to fiddle in with their FONT element. (I used this name for a
> > reason!). So, the question becomes -- where does one stop with physical
> > formatting elements?
>
> My opinion: add exactly one more element, and then stop. Any new
> formatting characteristics should be added as attributes on that
> element. (This would have to be a new element because all of
> the existing formatting elements are special-purpose.)
> --Joe English
If deprecating all the other physical elements is acceptable, and workable,
then I heartily agree. I just don't think that it would be acceptable, to
the user community, to do so.
Ian ............................................. igraham@hprc.utoronto.ca