Hi Lee, I do not where you are getting your definitions from. Yet, my assumption is that you are not a linguist. What you put in the realm of semantics is actually linguistics in general. The fields are interrelated. I believe this is the wrong forum to take this all apart and clarify your misconceptions of the subject matter of linguistics and grammar. I you are truly interested we can e-mail off list. regards Keith. Am 27.02.2012 um 19:01 schrieb Lee Passey:
On Mon, February 27, 2012 1:19 am, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
HI Lee,
I believe we basically, agree that the use of "less" complex markup is the way to go.
No, I don't think so. I believe, as Albert Einstein suggested, that everything should be made as simple as possible, /but no simpler/. If it makes sense to mark every line of poetry with <line> or <div class="line"> or <span class="line"> then I think it should be done. The fact that some user agents may not be able to deal with the markup is no excuse not to include it for other user agents. The goal should be first to maximize textual richness, and secondarily to simplify markup. Gratuitous markup should be avoided, but significant markup should be included.
What I have come to realize is that we do have a problem about terms. what you mostly call semantic, I still put in the realm of syntax as a linguist, or better express as a computer linguist.
Semantics is the study of meaning, and linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used to understand human expression through language. As such, lexicology, syntax and etymology can all be said to be part of semantics.
The opposite of semantics is not syntax, but...well, I don't know what you would call it; abstract representationalism maybe?
A word is a word is a word; whether you call it /wort/ or /mot/ or /palabra/ or 119 110 114 100 the meaning does not change. This is semantics. On the other hand, if I draw a random glyph on a canvas at a specific point, and different random glyph on the canvas immediately to its right, and yet another random glyph on the canvas again to the right that sequence of glyphs, in and of themselves, have no meaning. This is presentation.
You see poem, verse, stanza and line are first and foremost syntactic. Naturally, they carry semantic meaning in there labels. Yet, no where are these objects being used to do any "semantic" analysis of of text.
Well, at the very least semantic analysis is being performed when a human reader views the text. But in almost every user agent semantic analysis is being done as well. The perfect example of this is the much-discussed paragraph.
I would argue that the concept of a paragraph is a semantic concept, not a presentational one. Now every good user agent available has the ability to allow the user to specify how a paragraph should be rendered (indented, degree of indentation, line spacing before, line spacing after, etc.). The only way that a user agent can satisfy those requirements is to do a semantic analysis of the file; and because computers are still far behind the human brain in their capacity to do semantic analysis, they /have/ to rely on explicit markup indicating the semantic meaning.
I can fully understand your dislike of my approach, because the lines of a poem are not paragraphs.
Precisely. And when you tell a user agent that they are, you are lying to the poor computer, and confusing it.
Yet, if I disregard the intended use of paragraphs and say that by using style/class elements I make the these paragraphs formally to lines of a poem.
You didn't do the experiment, did you?
What if you're user agent is too unsophisticated to understand CSS? What if you have a human user that replaces your CSS, relying on the notion that you won't lie about the semantic meaning of well-established markup?
The user agent could care less. It just renders the markup.
Sure. Computers are literal, and will not second-guess the instructions they are given. But is your e-text a work with linguistic meaning, or is it paint-by-numbers instructions on how to create a graphic image?
It is the result that matters. Or, have you not used a wrench as a hammer, a screw driver as a chisel? Sometimes, it is practical to "misuse" tools or here markup.
I'm nothing if not a pragmatist. Sometimes a man's got to do what a man's got to do. But be wary of treating every problem as a nail just because the only tool you're familiar with is a hammer. In the case of poetry, not only is there a better way, but that way has /no/ downside.
Learn the rules, so you know how to break them properly.