About Character Formatting in HTML...
= Index DOT Html by Brian Wilson =

Justification | Physical Vs. Virtual Styles | A Special Generic Style
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Justification for Character Formatting
Character Formatting (which should be rendered distinctly from non-formatted text) allows the author in-line control over changes to content, whereas the other basic formatting mode, Block Formatting, defines content into vertically distinct sections from surrounding text. A visual browser will usually render Character Formatting changes in place while Block Formatting will render any applicable formatting plus an additional line break before and after the content block.

The main intent of SGML (and the derivative HTML language) is to be a device independent language for describing the content of documents. To accomplish this, it tries to divorce presentation rules from textual content. Most HTML elements are not intended to give direct control to the author over how the final layout will look, but many Character Formatting elements (especially many of the newer ones) now give an author this control.
Physical Vs. Virtual Character Formatting Elements
There are two classes of character formatting styles - Physical styles (referred to currently as "inline presentational elements" in the XHTML specs and in the past as "typographical elements") and Virtual styles (referred to currently as "inline phrasal elements" in the XHTML specs and in the past as "logical" or "idiomatic" elements.) Each Physical style should be rendered distinctly from other Physical styles, while each Virtual style should be rendered distinctly from other Virtual styles. Many of the Physical styles are the common visual rendering analog for Virtual styles (i.e.: strong emphasis <strong> is usually rendered as boldface: <b>)

Physical Styles
[<big>, <blink>, <b>, <font>, <i>, <small>, <s, strike>, <sub>, <sup>, <tt>, <u>]
Physical styles explicitly describe what the final appearance of the contained text should look like. If the rendering device does not have the capability to produce the indicated Physical style (such as a browser for the visually impaired), this formatting may be lost.

Virtual Styles
[<abbr>, <acronym>, <cite>, <code>, <dfn>, <em>, <kbd>, <q>, <samp>, <strong>, <var>]
Virtual styles purposefully do not include any final rendering hints in their definitions. These styles describe instead how the contained text is used in the context of the document. The main benefit of such elements is when a document is experienced using a method OTHER than a standard screen-based visual environment; the INTENT of the content can be preserved.

Which Styles to Use?
The original HTML 2.0 specification contained all the Virtual styles listed above, while including only a few of the listed Physical styles. The many Physical styles now available are more recent and reflect a demand from authors for more explicit rendering control. To improve portability though, it is usually recommended to use Virtual styles rather than Physical in your documents.
Example: Use of the <i> element to render text in italics will only be effective on those browsers which are capable of displaying italics. Not all browsers are guaranteed to have this ability. It is often better to use logical styles such as <em> which specify that the contents need emphasis of SOME sort, regardless of the presentation mode.

A Special Generic Character Style
[<span>]
The introduction of Style Sheets has added two new HTML elements to allow for generic situations where no specific HTML markup would be appropriate. The SPAN element (and its companion Block Formatting element DIV) has no real inherent semantic purpose assigned to its structure - the author can assign Style Sheet presentation properties as needed.


Related Sites
Official References
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1866.txt
RFC 1866: The HTML 2.0 specification (plain text)
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec
The web version of the HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866) specification
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Wilbur/
The HTML 3.2 (Wilbur) recommendation
[Includes all HTML 2 character elements and newer formatting elements in common use]
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/
The HTML 4.0 Recommendation
[Includes all 2.0, and 3.2 elements plus several new character styles]
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1.html
Cascading Style Sheets, Level 1
[Includes usage of SPAN and DIV]
http://wp.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/html_extensions.html
Netscape Extensions to HTML 2.0
[Details FONT SIZE element usage (this document also used to describe Blink as well)]
http://wp.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/html_extensions_3.html
Netscape Extensions to HTML 3.0
[Includes Big, Small, Sub and Sup]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/html/reference/elements.asp
Internet Explorer Tag reference
[Details Font Color and Face usage as well as 2.0, 3.2 and common extensions]


Tutorials
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimerP2.html#PV
"A Beginner's Guide to HTML" from NCSA - Logical versus Physical styles

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