Before the hijacking of the word semantics
by web standardistas, there was a need recognized by the CSS developers to separate content from presentation and this they have managed to achieve to a large extent. Following years of developers slicing images and placing them into tables it was a breath of fresh air that not only machines, but also humans could read the HTML code. At about the same time the word semantic
took another tint, this time being associated with accessibility
and the ability of screen readers to translate the mark-up for readers. To achieve all these a jumble of technologies got all mixed up, CSS, HTML and its ugly cousin XHTLM, JavaScript, PHP, python etc.
To make it worse we now have the Semantic Web
which is a group of methods and technologies to allow machines to understand the meaning -- or “semantics” -- of information on the World Wide Web as coined by Tim Berners-Lee. He defines the Semantic Web as “a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines.”
So where does TeX and LaTeX stand in all these? You can make it as semantic as possible. For example the following TeX code is very semantically’ correct.
Lorem ipsum etc
Another paragraph of Lorem
\bye
LaTeX
is a different story, in that first and foremost is a system for structured documents
. Its commands generally at the user level are very semantic
and part of its strength.
\begin{document}
\chapter{}
Lorem...
\section{}
\bibliography{}
\end{document}
is as semantic
as you will ever get any other mark-up language! By just being careful in your texts, you can ensure that they are both semantically correct and readable. Certain mark-up will always contain some form of presentational data similar to problems with HTML, but by being careful in your definitions you can avoid this. Call a colored box \colorbox{}
rather than \redbox
and use \emph
rather than \textit
. This is easier said that done though. Consider the following:
The evidence is, \textit{prima facie}, convincing.
and
U.S.S. \textit{Philadelphia}, U.S.S. \textit{Alabama}.
Perhaps one can define a semantic macro for ship names and using \ship{}
, but what about prima facie
where does one stop?
newcommand
s for those things.) – user1208 Dec 31 '10 at 14:57