Signified

Yesterday, Håkon Wium Lie, Chief Technology Officer for Opera Software released his open letter to the Web community in which he states:

Today we have taken a stand. Opera has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in its Web browser, Internet Explorer. We believe that Microsoft has harmed Web standards by refusing to support them; Microsoft often participates in creating Web standards, promoting them, and even promising to implement them. Despite their talent, however, they refuse to support Web standards correctly. For example, Internet Explorer is the only modern Web browser that does not support Acid2.

Now, unlike Chris Wilson, I’m not employed as a Microsoft apologist. Yes, Internet Explorer is rubbish, if you don’t like it, don’t use it, move on! However, I have to take issue with Håkon when he asserts Internet Explorer is the only modern Web browser that does not support Acid2.

I’m writing this post using Firefox version 2.0.0.11 - A “modern Web browser” I would think (It is the latest version!). I also have both Internet Explorer 6 and Opera 9 living in Program Files for just such an occasion.

Let’s see if the statement holds water. OK Opera 9, put your money where Håkon’s mouth is:

Impressive! Just like the Acid2 reference rendering.

Next, Let’s see if Håkon is on the money when it comes to Internet Explorer 6:

Ouch! It’s like a train wreck. It’s horrible but I can’t look away.

I must say, Håkon has certainly earned his money so far. I suppose it’s just a formality that we get the Firefox 2 rendering out of the way, I mean, It is an ultra-modern standards-compliant web browser and, like Håkon said, Internet Explorer is the only modern Web browser that does not support Acid2. Firefox 2 is gonna shit this in!

Oops!

Look out Mozilla, you’re about to get hit with an antitrust. The folk at Opera don’t take kindly to browser manufacturers fucking up their Internet, and I’m certainly not going to continue my relationship with you if your browser can’t even display a smiley face properly.

Yes, yes, I know. Acid2 contains an invalid doctype, multiple empty elements and validates only tentatively as HTML 4.01 Strict. Go tell someone who cares.

My point is; Acid2 is not a modern web page and hence should not be used as a benchmark for “modern web browsers” - the likes of which I would not consider Internet Explorer 6 to be a member (if you think a dog year is short, you should live a year in a browser’s shoes!).

Dobbers wear nappies Opera. We don’t need you to look after our rights on the web - especially when it comes to whining about a competitor and leaving you with as much credibility as a Big Brother contestant. How much (anti)trust do you think that stirs up?

A recent post to the HTML WG list entitled ‘HTML 5′ and some poem markup? has got me all in a huff. It was an innocent request by Dr Olaf Hoffmann which started like this:

What I missed so many years in (X)HTML is some useful markup for poems. The result we can see in the ‘real web life’ - a lot of meaningless tag soup around, disoriented authors lost between silence and semantically meaningless markup… Obviously poem markup is still not available in ‘HTML 5′. Why not? Can this be added to the ‘HTML 5′ draft?

Dr Hoffmann then goes on to plead his case and suggest such semantic elements as <poem>, <stanza>, and <line>.

There were some interesting responses:

• There’s <p> for each stanza and <br> for separating lines.
• Are there use case where software that consumes markup would benefit from poem-specific semantics?
• How would they [search engines] be helped by poem-specific semantics?
• Do I understand you correctly that you want to include markup for a specific domain (poetry) in HTML5?
• A markup language should probably include as little as possible from specific domains and focus on the general things instead. Domain specifics should be handled via an extension mechanism that allows for unambiguous interpretation of the expressed information
• HTML5 actually defines how to mark up poems in HTML (the word "poem" is in the spec half a dozen times, in fact!). Specifically: the stanzas of poems written in the classical form are given by <p> elements, with line breaks indicated by <br> elements (one of the few allowed uses of <br>).
• the stanzas of freeform poems are given by <pre> elements.

The gist of the thread was this; There is no <poem> element and there never will be. If you want to mark up a poem semantically then you have one of three options available to you:

1. Use a <p> element which is as much a poem as <b> or <strong> is a heading
2. Create your own "proprietary" markup (<poem>, <stanza>, and <line>) so you can join the same exclusive club as <blink> and <marquee>
3. Stop reading poetry

The simple and unfortunate fact is this: you cannot mark up a poem (and a great many other pieces of information) in (X)HTML. You can make a piece of text "look" like a poem with a few <p> and <br> elements (just as you can make a piece of text "look" like a heading with a <strong> element), but it IS NOT and WILL NEVER BE a poem.

Sorry Dr Hoffmann. Maybe we should all stick to prose.