[Pmwiki-users] the descriptions of emphasis

[Neil Herber]

PmWiki principle number 1 is "Favor writers over readers", and it goes on 
to note that burdening writers with the minutia of HTML is undesirable.

With that principle in mind, I would suggest that the three modes of text 
emphasis should be renamed, and the HTML that PmWiki emits should be 
changed. Anybody who has used a word processor knows about italics and 
bold, but the concept of "emphasis" is almost pure HTML.

As far as I can tell, these changes should have absolutely no effect on any 
user *unless* their browser settings or style sheets render the emphasis 
modes differently.

Doubled single-quotes ('') usually render as italics but emit <em></em> tags
Call this mode "italics" and emit <i></i>

Tripled single-quotes (''') usually render as bold but emit 
<strong></strong> tags
Call this mode "bold" and emit <b></b>

Five single-quotes (''''') usually render as bold italics but emit 
<strong><em></em></strong> tags
Call this mode "bold italics" and emit <b><i></i></b>

These thoughts came to me when I noticed that the descriptions of these 
modes in the various Quick Reference proposals used the bold and italic 
nomenclature even though the HTML did not use <b> and <i> tags. The 
descriptions in the current PmWiki documentation are dead accurate. For 
example:

>Use doubled single-quotes (''), i.e., two apostrophes, for emphasis 
>(usually italics)


Neil

Neil Herber
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