Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> You quoted me out of context (again).

  No, I didn't. Saying that is another of your cheap tactics.
  You give the answer yourself:

> It is very clear what i mean with "anything" is layout.

  And that's the thing to which I answered "no".
  I said that if you specify <H1>, you are telling that it's a level 1 header
and thus should be layouted as such. It should not be layouted as a footnote
or a marginal note, but as a header. If the page viewer layouts it as a
footnote, it's clearly breaking the meaning of the tag. Thus you are
influencing the layout by saying that it's a header.

>>   This is a minor difference. Regardless of whether it starts in a new
>> page or not, it should still be a *header*, not something else (eg.
>> a footnote). You are affecting the layout by specifying that it's a header.
>> If you had used another tag (eg. <p>), the layout would be completely
>> different, and the meaning of the text inside the tags would be different.

> That is exactly what I am saying!

  You are changing your mind constantly. You could decide whether or not
a specific structure tag affects the layout. Sometimes you say no ("it
could be anything"), sometimes you say yes ("that's exactly what I am
saying").

>  The structure tag h1 can be rendered in
> many different layouts.

  Yes, but not at will. If it's a header, it should look like a header. It
should not look like something else (eg. a footnote). That's the point.
  What you are telling with <H1> is "the page should be layouted so that
this thing looks like a header of level 1". Thus you are affecting the
layout of the page.

>  But you want control over the layout and thus you
> imply you want tonctrol over where to put it.  I am arguing for the reader
> to decide which layout he/she prefers.  Not more, not less.

  Now you are claiming something I have never said.
  Yes, it's a good thing that the author of a page can give the reader a
layout which the author feels that helps the reader. I'm not saying that
the reader should be *forced* to use that layout.
  And how could the reader decide which layout he prefers when there are
no options? Browsers have one single layout by default, and even if it is
possible to change it, no-one does.

  And as I said before (and you conveniently skipped): The reader *can't know*
what is important and what is not. The author does. Thus the author can help
the reader by giving him this information.

> - The user does not have the font Helvetica

  Then the browser uses a default. So what?
  CSS is not "use this or don't show the page at all". It's "use this if
you can".

> - The user scren resolution may not be sufficient to clearly see a
>   difference between bold and normal text
> - The user might be on a too small screen where 20 pixel height is too much

  The user screen can be so small that he can't properly view an image which
the author wants to show. What should the author do? Reduce the image size
to something really small just in case?
  Besides, most browsers have a zooming option. Once again: It's not about
forcing.

> Yes, that is indeed your intention.  The problem is that you fail to help
> because of the way HTML is meant to be (not depend ona s specific layout),
> but once you have a specific layout you also make assumptions based on the
> layout you set.

  That makes no sense at all.
  Firstly, "you fail to help" means that no-one, absolutely no-one gets any
advantage of the layout I used. Reading people's comments about the new
layout ("much better than the old one") clearly disproves this.
  Secondly, the reason you give for this just doesn't make sense: "Because
of the way HTML is meant to be"? What that does mean? How is that relevant
to the fact that people like the current layout more than the old one?

> On the other hand, had your layout not depended on
> the specificc layout elements you have and instead focused on structure
> along, this problem would not exist.

  And then almost a 100% of people out there would suffer from the default
layout of the pages, which makes the content harder to read and understand?
And don't come up again with the crap that users "decide which layout they
want", because they don't.
  You want me to drop out layout because two people in the world *might* be
reading the pages in a screen with a really really small resolution? Besides
that being extremely unlikely, it's not practical to take away the layout
from thousands of people just because two of them might want something
different.

  Besides, taking away the layout information wouldn't have helped to this
matter. The browser does not break the lines in <pre>-blocks because of
its very definition. With a really small resolution you get a horzontal
scrollbar because the text in the <pre> doesn't fit.
  Ah, but <pre> is a layouting tag... Oops. I should remove that too. Well,
goodbye indentation and fixed-width font then... The code would look really
great that way.

> As you see in the example I gave, you made an assumption.  You always have
> to make an assumption when you specify layout.

  So what? Who cares?
  In some cases assumptions can be made (such as with <pre> blocks described
above).

>  But why should you make an
> assumption if the user reading it _knows_ the layout he/she needs?

  This is simply not true. User's can't know how a page should be layouted
because they can't know what is important and what is not

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