Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Some people have their reading interrupted by drop caps. They are not needed at all.
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They are needed if the author wants them there - for whatever reason… in most cases a drop cap is at the beginning of a chapter/section, so the reading is
supposed to be interrupted. If the customer is so bothered by it, then they won’t purchase from that author. If enough people complain then the author can choose not to use them. I seriously doubt that is going to happen. You’ve seen some of the crap coding that customers are willing to put up with - a well done drop cap isn’t going to bother them more than that…
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Small Caps need to degrade to just caps and are only in some style guides.
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Yes, that is my point. Learn/use media queries and know the capabilities of the devices in your target market. You can easily start with a well done small cap, if that is what the author chooses to tell their story. If the device doesn’t support that function then there should be fallback coding to dumb it down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Sematics and accessibility is about easy access to the meaning, the actual content. Decoration shouldn't intrude or obfuscate.
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Semantics is about telling the device/app/reader
about the content - the customer should never see any semantics, only the content.
Accessibility is about providing enough semantic marking so the device/reader/app can provide an
equivalent, not the exact same, experience.
Decoration shouldn’t obfuscate, definitely. But “intrude” is a very broad, subjective, term that can be argued over and over. Final authority is the author, or publisher if the author has passed.