Semantic markup question!

[Quoth]

Some people have their reading interrupted by drop caps. They are not needed at all. Small Caps need to degrade to just caps and are only in some style guides.

Sematics and accessibility is about easy access to the meaning, the actual content. Decoration shouldn't intrude or obfuscate.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Very simple, Jon. If the TTS program saw <em>, it would speak the words until the closing </em> with emphasis however it might be defined in that program much as a human reader would do when reading text though the human is going to base the decision on other criteria. So in your first example, there would likely be no change on the visual italic <i></i> while in the second example, the semantic <em></em> would have a noticeable change and bright would be spoken with emphasis.

Once again, we are not talking about visual appearance (i.e. you reading the text with your mark 1 eyeballs) but rather accessibility where the text may be spoken, displayed in Braille, etc. The audio results will not be up to the results from the use of a full-fledged SSML but it is better than nothing.

But if the program did not read the <i> with emphasis, then there's a problem with the program doing the reading.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if the program did not read the <i> with emphasis, then there's a problem with the program doing the reading.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that the bookmaker should not use em. That's an entirely different discussion altogether. We all know, all too well, that the varied abilities of different ebook readers is...enormous. You can use Marvin or Moonreader or a Kindle or a Kobo and on and on and on.

That doesn't mean that we oughtn't prepare what we do, for what is definitively coming, Jon.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Likewise, for drop-caps.

Drop-caps are a problem. Sure you can get them perfect using your choice of font and line-height. Change the font and/or line-height and you're perfect drop-cap is no longer perfect. It's best to not have them in eBooks. Also, first letter being large is also a problem sort of. It's not a problem with ePub, but it is with Kindle when you cannot set the line-height for that line on a Kindle and it's noticeably a different line-height.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes, but that doesn't mean that the bookmaker should not use em. That's an entirely different discussion altogether. We all know, all too well, that the varied abilities of different ebook readers is...enormous. You can use Marvin or Moonreader or a Kindle or a Kobo and on and on and on.

That doesn't mean that we oughtn't prepare what we do, for what is definitively coming, Jon.

Hitch

I'll bet you it won't come in my lifetime. You need a program that does TTS and looks at the code when doing so. Screen reads are not that.

<em> was not created to be different then <i>. It was created to replace <i> (because it was decide to deprecate <i>) until it was decided that it was a mistake and <em> was still kept because programs supported <em>.

Gotta love a standards committee that does things just because they can and not because they should aka some of the nonsense with ePub 3 (thanks to a committee).

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Some people have their reading interrupted by drop caps. They are not needed at all.

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…

Originally Posted by Quoth

Small Caps need to degrade to just caps and are only in some style guides.

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.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Sematics and accessibility is about easy access to the meaning, the actual content. Decoration shouldn't intrude or obfuscate.

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.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'll bet you it won't come in my lifetime. You need a program that does TTS and looks at the code when doing so. Screen reads are not that.

<em> was not created to be different then <i>. It was created to replace <i> (because it was decide to deprecate <i>) until it was decided that it was a mistake and <em> was still kept because programs supported <em>.

Gotta love a standards committee that does things just because they can and not because they should aka some of the nonsense with ePub 3 (thanks to a committee).

Maybe it won't (come in our lifetimes). But,Jon, does that mean we oughn't do it, when we know it's the right sort of tack to take?

Even if I'm on the wrong side of the dirt when/if this is ever adopted universally; even if "em" is no longer used, but has been superseded by something else, ("momentous!"), doing it right, now, will allow my successors to regex it (or whatever replaces that...looks around in suspicious paranoia for her friend Gilliigan, her ChatGPI 4 API...) and make it user-friendly.

I resisted it for a while, (mostly due to a lack of a single adopted standard), but...I think about the things that are different for me now, over the last 5 years of aging; I think of my husband's Grandmother and his Dad, both vociferous readers who lost their vision and were thus reliant upon Audiobooks and...my attitude is, I can do this little extra thing.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'll bet you it won't come in my lifetime. You need a program that does TTS and looks at the code when doing so. Screen reads are not that.

What? It's already here. Click on the Braille topic. Watch the linked DAISY videos.

How the hell do you think programs read the HTML, convert to SSML, and feed it to the OS's Text-to-Speech engines?

Originally Posted by JSWolf

<em> was not created to be different then <i>. It was created to replace <i> (because it was decide to deprecate <i>) until it was decided that it was a mistake and <em> was still kept because programs supported <em>.

Again. Read the HTML5 specs.

It's absurd to continue acting as if it's 1997 + HTML4.0.

There has been 25 years of enhancements since then, and billions of non-English speakers brought onto the internet.

As has been described to you a thousand times before, Internationalization was one of the huge enhancements of HTML5 over HTML4.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if the program did not read the <i> with emphasis, then there's a problem with the program doing the reading.

But there are cases where something in italic should not be emphasized, as has been pointed out with examples many times.

As I have written before, I can only assume that your thread hijacking is deliberately malicious.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

But there are cases where something in italic should not be emphasized, as has been pointed out with examples many times.

Most italics are just italics and are very tedious and wrong if emphasised. That's why they later un-depreciated <i> after creating <em>. You do need both.
Jon, listen to some good audio books read by humans and follow the text.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Most italics are just italics and are very tedious and wrong if emphasised. That's why they later un-depreciated <i> after creating <em>. You do need both.
Jon, listen to some good audio books read by humans and follow the text.

I have been listening to a good audiobook read by a human. I'm almost done listening to The Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett.

Here is one of the lines from the eBook.

<p class="para">“Ah,” he said. “One of the <span class="italic">difficult</span> ones.”</p>

It gets read properly and not an <em> in sight.

[Turtle91]

… “read by a human”… stop being obtuse.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have been listening to a good audiobook read by a human. I'm almost done listening to The Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett.

Here is one of the lines from the eBook.

<p class="para">“Ah,” he said. “One of the <span class="italic">difficult</span> ones.”</p>

It gets read properly and not an <em> in sight.

I didn't explain well. TTS systems need clues like <em>. Expert real humans don't. That probably ought to be an <em> given the context and it's in dialogue.

However it's more broken to make every italic be an <em>, which I often see and every bold be a <strong>.

OT, anyone want a nice design for clock?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

… “read by a human”… stop being obtuse.

It seems that is unlikely to happen until he experiences consequences.

He has complete immunity against facts, logic, and reason.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if the program did not read the <i> with emphasis, then there's a problem with the program doing the reading.

No, Jon, that would be a problem with the person who coded the book and used <i> instead of <em>. Once again, try to grok the difference between visual and semantic tags. As an example, say the ebook has the name of a ship traditionally shown in italic i.e. HMCS Chippawa. Would you expect that name to be spoken with emphasis? As another example, an ebook has the phrase Damn your black soul to the depths of Hades!. Would you expect that phase to be spoken with emphasis?

Seriously, Jon, consider taking a holiday from posting until you are able to add some value to the threads. At this point in time, very few of your posts meet that standard.