Semantics

[Luigi Donatello Asero]

On the page https://www.scaiecat-spa-gigi.com/it/svezia.html
there is a part where I mention "Gullmarnfjörden" as the only real fjord in
Sweden.
As "Gullmarnfjörden" is in the region Västra Götaland, I thought I could
use <h6>
for the following heading
"Gullmarn, l´unico vero fiordo in Svezia",
given that I had used <h3> for the administrative decentralization
and <h4> for the "län" which in fact belong to the local administration and
<h5> for each of these "län" or regions
(Västra Götaland, Halland being two of these).
So, in the end I used <h6> for
"Gullmarn, l´unico vero fiordo in Svezia",
because Gullmarnfjorden is in Västra Götaland.
However, the font-size of <h6> is very little and perhaps difficult to read.
A possible option would be to talk about Gullmarnfjorden on the page which
deals with Västra Götaland but as this is the only fjörd in Sweden, I
thought that it would suit to the page about Sweden as well.
Any suggestions?

 

[dorayme]

However, the font-size of <h6> is very little and perhaps difficult to read.

Space the sizes by making h6 readable and h1 whatever is
reasonable. Readability and reasonableness are transitive
qualities in this context. In other words Mr. Luigi, they then
all become readable and reasonable.

 

[Luigi Donatello Asero]

read.

Space the sizes by making h6 readable and h1 whatever is
reasonable. Readability and reasonableness are transitive
qualities in this context. In other words Mr. Luigi, they then
all become readable and reasonable.

Are you talking about relative or absolute sizes?

 

[dorayme]

Are you talking about relative or absolute sizes?

What does it matter? What do you understand by what I say that
this distinction should matter to you?

(Plus, you have been around here long enough to know to forget
talking or thinking about absolute sizes except to bash people up
or (like old Korpela) to try to trip poor martians up)

 

[Luigi Donatello Asero]

[cut]

Are you talking about relative or absolute sizes?

What does it matter? What do you understand by what I say that
this distinction should matter to you?

Does that play any role in this context,
Miss dorayme?

 

[dorayme]

[cut]

Are you talking about relative or absolute sizes?

What does it matter? What do you understand by what I say that
this distinction should matter to you?

Does that play any role in this context,
Miss dorayme?

You are a strange person Luigi, I said about as clear as could be
that it made no difference but you still keep on asking? If you
understood what I said to you in one context, you can adapt the
idea to the other context. Yeah.... now ask me about if i have
been to Tasmania... you might as well... Mr....

(I am in a very irritable mood because I have a fair sized print
layout job on and I backed up a new folder of the work with an
old one, taking me back a day at least. From now on, I duplicate
every crucial folder and operate only on these when I back up to
different disks. Tip, when backing up from one disk to another,
make sure which way is which. So stop irritating me with the
unbridled exercise of your freedom Mr. Luigi. You need to put
your thinking cap on. Ah... that's better... I feel strangely
better and calmer now... Don't go anywhere Luigi, you serve a
crucial purpose)

 

[Harlan Messinger]

On the page https://www.scaiecat-spa-gigi.com/it/svezia.html
there is a part where I mention "Gullmarnfjörden" as the only real fjord in
Sweden.
As "Gullmarnfjörden" is in the region Västra Götaland, I thought I could
use <h6>
for the following heading
"Gullmarn, l´unico vero fiordo in Svezia",
given that I had used <h3> for the administrative decentralization
and <h4> for the "län" which in fact belong to the local administration and
<h5> for each of these "län" or regions
(Västra Götaland, Halland being two of these).
So, in the end I used <h6> for
"Gullmarn, l´unico vero fiordo in Svezia",
because Gullmarnfjorden is in Västra Götaland.
However, the font-size of <h6> is very little and perhaps difficult to read.

So adjust your browser to increase the text size.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Luigi Donatello Asero wrote: - -

So adjust your browser to increase the text size.

Although I normally ignore both Luigi Asero's messages and responses to
them, this seems to be a case where a correction is needed. It is not
constructive to suggest that an author increases his browser's font size to
make <h6> elements large enough, when the _problem_ is that <h6> elements'
font size is smaller than the basic font size, by browser defaults.

Whether Luigi Asero, or someone else, really _needs_ heading levels down to
the 6th level is a different question. It's a rare situation, but there
_are_ cases where you need them, typically in fairly large documents (which
should perhaps also exist as split-up versions where the problem does not
arise, but I digress).

If you use <h6>, the sensible thing is - as "dorayme" suggested, if I read
his or her somewhat implicit message correctly - to set
h6 { font-size: 100%; }
together with font-size settings for other heading levels in a manner that
matches this setting. Normally the sizes should grow at least by 10% when
going to a higher level, but perhaps you can play by using other features
too, e.g. setting font-weight: normal for h6 and font-weight: bold for h5,
in which case both h5 and h6 could have font-size: 100% since the bolding
makes a difference.

Authors should usually consider setting top and bottom margins for heading
elements, since the common defaults are typographically wrong: they have
equal margin above and below, but the top margin should be larger than the
bottom margin. You need to pay attention to the fact that the first element
after a heading (typically <p>) may have a top margin too (<p> has, by
common defaults), so it may need some styling to make the net margins OK.

When setting the margins, you should normally use the em unit, and this
means you should try to remember that em means the font size of the element
itself. Thus, if you set
h1 { font-size: 200%; margin: 1em 0 2em 0; }
you would make the margins rather huge, since here 1em means the font size
of the <h1> element, i.e. twice the font size of copy text.

 

[mbstevens]

Normally the sizes should grow at least by 10% when
going to a higher level, but perhaps you can play by using other features
too, e.g. setting font-weight...

I occasionally like the look of a header that has 100% size and normal
weight, but wide letter spacing.

 

[Luigi Donatello Asero]

[cut]

Are you talking about relative or absolute sizes?

What does it matter? What do you understand by what I say that
this distinction should matter to you?

Does that play any role in this context,
Miss dorayme?

You are a strange person Luigi, I said about as clear as could be
that it made no difference but you still keep on asking? If you
understood what I said to you in one context, you can adapt the
idea to the other context. Yeah.... now ask me about if i have
been to Tasmania... you might as well... Mr....

Yes, because, as far as I remember, there was someone trying to call me
from Tasmania.....
so, either it was you in which case, you should have known about it or it
was not....
Also, because I have met people who seem to have written or read something
on Usenet
(perhaps in this NG??)

(I am in a very irritable mood because I have a fair sized print
layout job on and I backed up a new folder of the work with an
old one, taking me back a day at least.

From now on, I duplicate

every crucial folder and operate only on these when I back up to
different disks. Tip, when backing up from one disk to another,
make sure which way is which. So stop irritating me with the
unbridled exercise of your freedom Mr. Luigi. You need to put
your thinking cap on. Ah... that's better... I feel strangely
better and calmer now... Don't go anywhere Luigi, you serve a
crucial purpose)

I like freedom. If you do not, it is your choice.

 

[dorayme]

If you use <h6>, the sensible thing is - as "dorayme" suggested, if I read
his or her somewhat implicit message correctly - to set
h6 { font-size: 100%; }
together with font-size settings for other heading levels in a manner that
matches this setting. Normally the sizes should grow at least by 10% when
going to a higher level, but perhaps you can play by using other features
too, e.g. setting font-weight: normal for h6 and font-weight: bold for h5,
in which case both h5 and h6 could have font-size: 100% since the bolding
makes a difference.

I had in mind to first ensure that main body text is 1em. Then
set the smallest heading to be readable in relation to this.
Rarely lower than .8? You then step up more or less evenly to h1.
h5 would be just above (or not smaller than body text, its
boldness might be enough) and so on. But this is not the only way
to go, your suggestion is another. I prefer to follow the beacon
of main body text as 1em. It feels right and proud. But it all
depends on what exactly is being done.

(btw, you are welcome to refer to me as "it". I will not be
offended. In fact, it will feel right, given my origins... Plus,
I think you should be taking greater responsibility for our
Luigi. You cannot remain aloof forever. There is work at the
coalface. And that is where Luigi is, conducting a world wide
business requiring security and an almost infinite number of
human languages)

 

[dorayme]

I like freedom. If you do not, it is your choice.

I cannot accept this. You choose for me.

 

[dorayme]

I had in mind to first ensure that main body text is 1em. Then
set the smallest heading to be readable in relation to this.
Rarely lower than .8? You then step up more or less evenly to h1.
h5 would be just above (or not smaller than body text, its
boldness might be enough) and so on. But this is not the only way
to go, your suggestion is another. I prefer to follow the beacon
of main body text as 1em.

Just a minute, a correction...

I think I had in mind that the body text under h6 would not be
smaller than h6. But, come to think of it, this might be rather
odd! It would still be smaller than 1em and so different to the
rest of the body text under the other headings. I vaguely
imagined this to be acceptable in the unusual situation of a need
for h6.

So perhaps your suggestion is the more straightforward. Your idea
has the consequence that body text has to be not smaller than h6.
Which does not mean it has to be smaller (and so go against the
generally good idea of keeping main body text at 1em). So, yes, I
was not thinking right through this - and probably have got more
thinking to go on it.

 

[Luigi Donatello Asero]

(btw, you are welcome to refer to me as "it". I will not be
offended. In fact, it will feel right, given my origins...

Why do you want him to use "it"?
Are you a thing (for example a robot, a computer) or an animal
(although you might use he or she for pets might you not?).
Or are you Freud´s "es"?

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

I think I had in mind that the body text under h6 would not be
smaller than h6. But, come to think of it, this might be rather
odd! It would still be smaller than 1em and so different to the
rest of the body text under the other headings. I vaguely
imagined this to be acceptable in the unusual situation of a need
for h6.

This seems a bit confused, and we are perhaps discussing different design
approaches in a mixed manner.

My suggestion of setting the font size of h6 to 100% was simply aimed at
dealing with the problem that the common browser default is smaller and
makes the h6 text too small. Whether the exact percentage you use is 100% or
110% or 90% is much less important than doing _something_ with the problem
that default rendering makes h6 elements appear in about 63% of the size of
copy text (typically corresponding to <small><small>...</small></small> or
<font size="1">...</font>). The default rendering makes h6 look less
important than copy text and almost or completely unreadable. (If a use can
read text in 63% size, he has very good eyesight and very good browsing
conditions _or_ he has chosen too big a basic font size for his browser.)
The default bolding of headings might be seen as alleviating the problem of
looking less important, but it adds to the second problem: small-size text,
especially in a serif font, is harder to read when bolded.

I did not suggest setting the body text (copy text) size but only heading
sizes, as percentages of body text size. Starting from 100% for <h6> looks
natural, since headings should look at least as important as body text, and
if we have 6 levels of headings, we get to rather huge font size for
highest-level headings if we make lowest-level headings larger than copy
text.

Using h6 { font-size: 90% } might be reasonable if you use a serif font for
headings and a sans serif font for copy text, since the difference between
fonts probably still makes the h6 text look somewhat larger than copy text.

 

[dorayme]

I did not suggest setting the body text (copy text) size but only heading
sizes, as percentages of body text size. Starting from 100% for <h6> looks
natural, since headings should look at least as important as body text, and
if we have 6 levels of headings, we get to rather huge font size for
highest-level headings if we make lowest-level headings larger than copy
text.

This seems to me a good natural approach. Having so many headings
will entail keeping the font-size differences between them all
smaller than is usual to ensure the h1 does not become absurdly
big. The crucial thing for Luigi to note, imo, is that the h6
must be readable and anything less than 100% for the h6 in all
the circumstances here is fraught with difficulties. But he will
not note this, or we will never know because his mind is fixed on
Tasmania, the Chinese language, security and freedom of
expression.

 

[Luigi Donatello Asero]

I cannot accept this. You choose for me.

????