<application> appearance in HTML

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Tue, 24 Jun 2014 10:38:08 -0600 (MDT)
Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:

> The current CSS makes <application> elements appear in bold text in 
> XHTML.  For example:
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browsers.html
> 
> This repeated use of bold makes for uncomfortable and fatiguing
> reading.
> 
> Allan and I have searched for less severe forms of highlighting. 
> Without resorting to color, there are not many options.  The best
> I've seen so far is font-variant: small-caps;, but that is quickly
> annoying also.
> 
> My suggestion at this point is to just remove the CSS entry for 
> applications.  The application names are names, and recognizably 
> distinct from other words on their own.
> 
> Unless there are complaints, I will plan to remove the .application 
> entry from docbook.css before the end of this week.

I would keep it and I would keep it as bold. I would only recommend a
consequent use of it. Using bold helps to find important locations a
bit faster without reading the whole sentence.

The example is a bit confusing as the highlighting is randomly used for
trademarks like Java and Adobe. While Flash is the application, Adobe
is the manufacturer's trademark.

The moment the highlighting will only be used for the application and
not for the manufacturer, it will be very helpful for the reader. 

Erich