Okay so here's some work. You might think this, my second post of the day means I'm not working, but this is the result of some actual work I needed to do! Suppose I want to describe some foreign text in a structural way in an html or xhtml document. I could use the <i></i> and <em></em> tags of course, but those would only give me foreign words and phrases displayed in the accustomed manner--italicized (usually the emphasis tag renders ital too, natch). Which is what people quoting words in other languages are used to seeing in books and academic texts. But that's not semantic, right? Right. It just controls the display of those words.

I am persuaded by the argument to use <cite></cite> tags, for two reasons: 1) it gets the job done, causing most browsers to render the enclosed text in a notably different way than the other text; and 2) it is (indirectly) actually descriptive of the phrase; if you accept the argument that in a manner of speaking you are quoting or citing a word from another source, in this case the source is a language other than the content of the body text. I'm more persuaded by <cite></cite> than I will ever be by <em></em> or italics. A third reason is that it's easier and quicker to code, also I have a fair amount of confidence browsers know what to do with it.

However, that isn't precisely what's going on. I'm not "citing" the language, I'm really just using it. I looked for this issue around the web. This guy has some interesting points, and his concerns seem valid. But he doesn't resolve the damn thing by a long shot.

PSU.edu has some tips and of course there's the venerable w3 consortium. I guess that's where I land with this. It feels clunky. First because it's an attribute, which means they haven't thought of a way for it to stand on its own. Would doing so be more or less structural? So it has to be applied to another element like P or SPAN.

Am I the only person who loathes the <span></span> tag? Or maybe I feel like there's a lacuna in it--somewhat because there's a lacuna in my own knowledge of the language codes, probably. RFC1766 provides a little more insight. The iso639-2 list helps, though now you have to decide if you want UTF8 or ISO8559, cripes. HERE is a list of language codes that's actually useful. (oh, here's something-- Burmese has 2 codes, bur and mya. So even with structural tags you get to make a choice of whose side you are on. For the record, I oppose the neofascist SLORC and thus choose bur. Myanmar, by providing a language code definition which clouds semantic precision, has slowed the development of the semantic web. As if brutal repression wasn't bad enough!)

So for the record, do you think you should probably write it this way: <span lang="es">tortillas, bolillos, empanadas, churros</span>? My study leads me to think I should, but now I'm going to hit the preview button to see if lj and my browser render it correctly.

(Aaand it did not. Which means I bolluxed it up because the first time I did it I didn't put it in the span tag. not to mention I forgot to put the ol ascii "ampersandltsemicolon" bit in the code tags I had)

I think it didn't render those two latin bits above (I love the word "lacuna") --which may be on lj or it may be my misuse of the tags. At this point I'm fed up for a while. That's why I'm journaling this, btw, to see what best practices other people prefer to use. You come at me with italics, though, and I'll just gag a little.

Now that we have a significant common event to adhere it to, I propose we replace the "hit by a bus theory" terminology--popularized by contingency planners everywhere--with the "bridges do fall down theory."

As in, "hey let's transfer some knowledge about this job function. you know, just in case a bridge falls out from under you." "I'm gonna document how to update this website, in case a bridge collapses on me."

etc.

Never mind why, the reasons are stupid beyond stupid. But check THIS out, there's one little project I have to do where I'm basically replacing CSS design with tables. Not the other way the good way, no. The bad "old" way.

Except for two things:
1) I wasn't doing web design much during the pre-CSS days. I actually don't know how to use tables "correctly", a fact I'm pretty proud of, since I forced myself to learn CSS.

2) Google doesn't know how to go backwards either. I searched for replacing css with tables and all search results were for replacing tables with css. When i searched for the exact phrase "replacing css with tables", no results. I shit you not, no results. CSS wins! Total victory! Victory Victory! I even searched "replace css with tables" and got one result, which was basically a dead end.

Yeah. I win some sort of google contest on getting null result from very common search terms I guess. But this doesn't help me.

search engine optimization is a subject I have a lot of interest in and I'm adding it as a kind of subsection to the work part of my website.

I posted a link to Puppy Linux yesterday and I'm actually trying it now on a Dell machine at the office--posting to this journal from the included Mozilla 1.8, in fact. It's pretty amazing how easy and fast it is. I'd like to test it on a truly older machine (128MB RAM, <1Ghz processor) and see how much difference the ramdisk implementation makes. The machine I have is capable of running Windows at 800x600, so I'm also a little vexed that puppy's XWM95 window manager defaulted to 640x480. But the speed more than makes up for it.

BUT SO much easier to use for a linux distro than some of the more ... shall we say... industrial strength versions, such as Debian or something. A little nervous about doing everything as root, but damn this is a sweet little system. Running mozilla, sodipodi, abiword, and an ssh client all at the same time right now and there's no hiccups, no nothing. This is practically a linux you could give your mom. (No, I gave linux to your mom, aww yeah). And between the live CD option and if you do a lot of stuff that can be stored on line (like journal, etc) why would you ever need your own hard drive? Well, I can think of a few reasons why, I'm just sayin.

I'm gonna try to use it to resurrect some old machines around the office.

Gorilla Glue is the shit, man! I used a tiny amount in a scanner repair (the two broken sides of the plastic casing for a photoelectric switch) and it's coming together swimmingly. For those of you scoring at home, I also got the drive belt reconnected to the scan "arm"/"housing" or whatever you want to call it, but that did not require glue. Soon I will triumph. If not, I will have to buy something, I suppose. Grr.

Also, I got up on time with my alarm. On track, baby. The back spasm nudge helped, I guess.

i have one of these chairs at my work now. I will win this battle against pain for sure.

if you aren't using the spot healing brush tool, you might as well throw photoshop in the trash and go use microsoft paint

It's seriously 90 degrees in our offices right now. ho-lee balls it's hot. It's never been this hot in here. I'm instantly thirsty (for beer, of course) and cranky. Not a good way to start the day. I do love my new bus line though. The 32D is sweet! I can go from my block to Nate's Clothing, or the gay 90s, or a 1 block walk to the train! I don't know what time it becomes the 32R, but that's pretty convenient too, since it runs over to Roseville (starting later in the morning). I could also take the 5 downtown but after the recent "exciting" "news" story about it, I best not. They'll stab you in the face!!