At 4:12 AM +0900 11/12/04, Michael Smith wrote:
>The problem is that its default rendering makes it inappropriate
>for marking up programming variables or program arguments -- which
>most people do not want rendered in italic.
I'd question that statement. I *do* want method arguments rendered in
italic, at least a significant fraction of the time. This is the
convention I've used in several books, including XML in a Nutshell,
and I've seen it used in other O'Reilly books as well.
I agree not everyone wants this, nor does everyone want it all of the
time. I've also written books where I did not italicize method
arguments. However no one single convention will satisfy everyone.
This is what CSS is for. Different documents can choose different
renderings for var, as they like.
However, I am specifically not bothered by the default rendering of
var as italic. This is a common idiom, and a reasonable one.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0321150406/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA
