Anton J Aylward | 29 Apr 2006 03:25
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Re: Emphasis or Italic?


Jon Noring wrote:
>>What's the difference between:
>>
>>  <em>emphasis</em>   and <i>italicized</i>
>>and
>>  <strong>strong</strong>  and <b>bold</b>

....

> From a visual presentation viewpoint they lead to the same end-result
> for nearly all browsers I know. But from a text semantic perspective,
> they are quite different.
> 
> This begs the interesting rhetorical question: in non-visual
> presentation, such as text-to-speech, how should <i> and <b> be aurally
> rendered to the listener?

That's a good point.
Especially of the text-to-speech software is a screen-scraper rather than a
HTML-reader.

I wish I could remember the source: I once heard on the radio a poem "fifty
ways to pronounce the letter 'O'".  It ranged from surprise, though
despondency to orgasmic.  It was a sound poem.  In text it would have been

   Oh!
   Oh!
   Oh!
   .....

Since _every_ one of the Ohs held emphasis - of some kind - it makes me
wonder ... can ANY text-to-speech converter replicate something like that?
  "Emphasis"  --  what emphasis.  And of course some of them will be louder
(i.e. stronger) than others....

Oh.  Right.

I've a mind to remove <em> and <strong> and put something in that will mean
<bold><italic>.  Visually that is useful.

/anton -- I'm not deaf, I'm ignoring you while I read this ...

Gmane