meta text (Re: Seriffed and...)

Jacques Du Pasquier ([email protected])
Wed, 19 Apr 1995 17:50:58 +0500


Philippe-Andre Prindeville <[email protected]> wrote:
> (...)
> So, we have the notions of "text" and "meta-text", ie. text on
> the text itself. Bold and italic aren't sufficient for denoting
> the difference. The meta-text itself can in turn be <strong> or
> <em>...
>
> Can we introduce a new mechanism? <ss> (for sans-serif)?

There is no obvious link between sans-serif/serif and meta/object, so this
would just add another formatting tag, bringing HTML closer yet to a
word-processing format. Now if HTML is to evolve in a useful way, it has to
tell browsers about content, not formatting.

In that line, along with the new support for math in version 3, the
introduction of a <meta> tag would seem quite reasonable to me. The need for
such a distinction is common. For specialized litterature in fact (like
mathematical logic prose), some generality could even be useful, e.g. a
<meta1> for text about normal text and a <meta2> for text about meta1-text.

Jacques Du Pasquier
[email protected]