Re: HTML tags in org, name, etc

[Chris Josephes <cpj1@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 11 Jul 1997, Jeremy Gaither wrote:
> HTML has evolved far beyond what it was intended for.  Business cards of 
> any sort are not good canidates to be encoded purely in HTML as it was 
> intended.  HTML, however, can be used to either augment or beautify a 
> business card now, with the expanded use of the IMG and FONT tags...


Let me interject my 2 cents with this statement.

The vCard definition is a data format that makes no attempt at style
presentation.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, which in its original form made
no attempt at setting style on any elements (until the "browser wars"
started and everything went downhill from there). 

So, isn't the idea of using a document-structure oriented language to
determine the presentation of style a bad idea from the start??  What
about the idea of using Cascading Style Sheets to suggest presentational
markup.  For one thing, it could be a hell of a lot easier on the parsers
out there.

Compare the two uses of "style".....

1.  HTML
--------
FN:<u>John Q Public Esq.</u>
BDAY:<blink>19701104</blink>

2.  Possible implementation of Cascading Style Sheets
-----------------------------------------------------
FN: John Q. Public Esq.
BDAY: 19701104
X-CSS: FN { text-decoration: underline; }
X-CSS: BDAY { text-decoation: blink; }

The second format is going to be a whole lot friendlier on all of the
parsers out there.  Thus the parsers that don't support CSS in a
vCard can still read the vCard without HTML tags or anything else
interfering with the normal parsing.  Plus, CSS has a lot more flexibility
when it comes to setting style such as multiple font choices, margins,
and text indentation.


--- Christopher Josephes -------------------------
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