Actually the markup I would use internally would be
<poem>
...
...
</poem>
which would map whichever of your options would be appropriate for the device.
I'm increasingly convinced that using markup that is associated with a specific
device (or devices) leads to ambiguity and confusion. Worse is <div class="something">
if it's true as you say that some devices won't handle css at all.
<p> is troublesome as well, because it's frequently used without regard to whether
what is being marked is, in fact, a paragraph; and <p> has constraints that are specific
to itself that create limitations - most troublesome to me is the inability to embed images
other than inline, so <p> won't flow around an image in the middle like a <div> will.
Or a <poem> for that matter.
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Lee Passey
<lee@novomail.net> wrote:
On 2/18/2012 1:22 PM, don kretz wrote:
There are two examples of possibly legitimate markup for poems at
eb.readingroo.ms <http://eb.readingroo.ms> in wordpress context,
duplicated at eb.readingroo.ms/dt.html <http://eb.readingroo.ms/dt.html
and eb.readingroo.ms/canto.html <http://eb.readingroo.ms/canto.html
in thrawest possible form (just view source in your browser.)
They both use completely un-marked-up text (zero markup) as sources.
Feedback please - I'm working out a poetry strategy too.
FWIW, I don't like the presentation at all -- but that is a result of your style sheets, not your markup -- which is, in fact, non-existent.
/My/ most fundamental rule for markup is that a document must look acceptable on a device that cannot handle CSS. On this count, your proposed formulation fails spectacularly.
In spite of Mr. Adcock's objections, I think that for poetry the <pre> element is exactly what is called for (and this is the opinion of the W3C as well; see http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/text.html#edef-PRE). <pre> is a block-level element, which means that it can be a direct replacement for a <div> element. And even though "[a]uthors are discouraged from altering this behavior through style sheets," it is certainly possible to do so.
So, rather than marking a poem as <div class="poem | poetry"> I recommend marking it as <pre class="poem | poetry">. In a user agent that respects style sheets you can override the default 'pre' presentation just as easily as you could if you were using the <div> element, but on older user agents (such as the "Kindle Klassic") the text would gracefully degrade to something at least acceptable, even if not very satisfying.
Other comments:
While a verse or stanza in a poem is certainly analogous to a paragraph, it is nonetheless not one. You should use <div class="stanza"> for that purpose, not <div class="poem"><p>.
I don't understand why you would use a horizontal rule in a poem as "a hard return" (whatever that means). Personally, I like short, centered horizontal rules as dingbats, but seeing a horizontal rule in a poem is jarring. Additionally, the old MobiPocket Reader (and presumably the old Kindles, although I can't say for sure) co-opted the horizontal rule to mean a page break, so poetry in that context could be broken up in very strange ways.
Other than that, I think your style sheet is largely irrelevant; it is almost certain that I will replace your preferred styles with my own. Markup, even for poetry, needs to be designed in such a way that it tolerates swapping styles. Therefore, the focus needs to be on the actual markup, and not the associated style sheet.