Semantics

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(Draft)

V3 is an editor used to create content for the web. That content is mainly intended to be injected inside web pages, but can definitely be reused and delivered through other medias.

Today, web site maintainers, designers, developers and users are much more aware about the value of their content, and about the readers who will reach it. It is not anymore a new thing to consider that our web pages will be navigated by people with disabilities, or even by non human beings like web crawlers. To properly satisfy those needs, the concept of Web Semantics has been introduced.

Semantic approach gives meaning to the content, adding relevant information to each piece of it, or even linking and giving sense to data inside of it. For the Semantic Web, presentational markup has no value as it doesn't properly explain or add value to the content.

Content Authors

The main advantage with semantics is that authors don't have to be worried about presentation details. They just write, properly expressing what they are intended to say.

There is though a cultural and technical barrier to be broken. Many users just like to "play" with text editors, creating "fine art" with their texts, using big font sizes, alignments and colors with no criteria (expect for them of course).

In one side, content authors must be well trained to first understand and appreciate the semantic approach, after that becoming technically capable to properly create semantic content.

The Editor

While our editor can't teach its users about the benefits of the semantic web, it must provide features for it to:

  • Make it simple to add semantic value to the content.
  • Provide all the necessary features for semantics.
  • Provide ways for web site maintainers to configure it in a way that minimizes semantic issues, possibly enforcing semantic rules.

Features

  • Make it possible to disable features (like toolbar items) that could produce non semantic markup.
  • Basic document structure: headers, lists, blocks, "strongs" and emphasis, block quotes, inline quotes, citation, abbreviations, acronyms, insertion and deletions.
  • Alternative text for images.
  • Language features: language code and direction.
  • Tables: headers, footers, scope, caption and summary.
  • Forms: field labels.
  • Possibility to define all presentation needs through CSS.
This page was last edited on 9 February 2008, at 18:02.