Re^2: INS, DEL, Q tags now allowed in posts (graceful)

I find your Italics or bold text silently becoming not Italics or bold because my browser doesn't support EM or STRONG fine. I don't find characters disappearing to be graceful enough, even for just quote characters. Quote characters can have a significant effect on meaning.

If there were a set of HTML tags that didn't get filtered but didn't get listed in some official list of PerlMonks-approved HTML tags, then I'd be less strongly opposed to Q being in such a list. There is no such list. I consider it a very bad idea to promote the use of a tag that is likely to lead to confusion for a large fraction (a majority?) of our users.

Some elitist label of "not modern" doesn't hold much sway with me. A large fraction of users is still a large fraction of users.

- tye

Comment on Re^2: INS, DEL, Q tags now allowed in posts (graceful)

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Re: INS, DEL, Q tags now allowed in posts (graceful) by jonadab (Parson) on Aug 19, 2004 at 02:09 UTC
I don't find characters disappearing to be graceful enough q tags don't represent characters; they're markup, metadata. (They may be represented _by_ characters, but that depends on the browser, the stylesheets in effect, and whatnot.) Quote characters can have a significant effect on meaning. So can italics, boldface, images, or lots of things. But q tags aren't used where a literal " character is wanted; we have entities for that. q tags are used for marking up a section of text; they are in principle similar to <cite> tags. Some elitist label of "not modern" doesn't hold much sway with me. I wouldn't make that argument if graceful degradation weren't one of the three or four most important aspects of the design of the web in the first place. Should mail servers not support CAPA because not all POP3 clients know how to use it? Or maybe the clients shouldn't attempt CAPA, since not all mail servers are guaranteed to support it? We're not talking here about taking functionality or information _away_ from people who use old software; we're talking about making previously-unavailable functionality or information available for people who use newer software that supports it; people who use software that doesn't will see the same thing they have been seeing. In adjectives, with the addition of inflectional endings, a changeable long vowel (Qamets or Tsere) in an open, propretonic syllable will reduce to Vocal Shewa. This type of change occurs when the open, pretonic syllable of the masculine singular adjective becomes propretonic with the addition of inflectional endings. — Pratico & Van Pelt, BBHG, p68	[reply]
Re^2: INS, DEL, Q tags now allowed in posts (graceful) by tye (Sage) on Aug 19, 2004 at 03:42 UTC
But q tags aren't used where a literal " character is wanted You can say that you don't use them that way. You can claim that they shouldn't be used that way. I don't believe your claim as stated. If there were a way to enforce how Q tags are used at PerlMonks, then your argument would have more validity. But if we could do that then we wouldn't have to filter any tags (just prevent them from being misused). Bold/Italics change emphasis. Quotes can change meaning. Quotes can be used to reverse meaning. Anyway, the potential benefits from the use of Q tags at PM are minimal. We have enough problems with tags that are allowed but can be misused. I find the cost/benefit of adding Q as another such to be a fairly easy choice, though I don't find either side of the computation that great. And thanks for the education on Q tags. - tye	[reply]