Quote:
Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan
Yes,and <i> or <b> instead of <span class="....>, I don't understand, really.
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That
<span class="....> stuff is bad XHTML. The simplest way to do those is with
<em> (emphasis) and
<strong>. If you're seeing a lot of
<span...>, it's because of the overuse of Word, and other programs that insert a lot of cruft.
<span...> and
<div...> are generic containers, that should be used when there is no other tag that is appropriate. It's lazy markup. Both of them are overused, and lead to a vague, illegible, incomprehensible document. I only use
<div...>, for instance, as actual
divisions in my markup -- literally, largeish pieces of the book: ie: cover, frontispiece, foreword, section, chapter, appendix, colophon, etc. I only use
<span...> for two unique tags: FirstLetter and FirstWord -- which don't have any easy equivalent in HTML.
A well-thought out set of XHTML tags for use in an ebook can actually make things a
lot better and allow for an amazing amount of control.
Done well, you can have
less tagging -- or you can ramp it up to quite a high level. The amount of tagging is dependent on the complexity of the document structure, though, not the display complexity.
I can give you a well-constructed ebook, and simply by editing the CSS, you can completely change the way it displays -- you wouldn't even have to open the ebook if the CSS were well-documented.
m a r