Re: link appearance and soft face properties

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com>]

           ... Users can decide to use it or not use it, but they
           cannot redefine it.

   I'm not sure what your point is. Is it my statement that you find
   weird or the fact that :underline is cast in concrete as
   underlining?

I misunderstood you.  I was wrong.  You were referring to a name of
one of the properties that a face may have, not to its properties in
general.

But please try to be less confusing.  I read

   ... distinguishing "soft" from "hard" text properties.

as refering to text properties, not to names of the text properties.

As you say, 

   I suggested we provide a way to make a portion of text appear as a
   link - in whatever way that appearance might be manifested.

That is clear language.  The appearance is a text property.  That can
be changed.  The name of a particular appearance is different.  That
description ought to remain constant.

Thus dogs can have different colors of fur, brown, black, or golden.
The notion of `dog' is like the notion of `appears as a link'.  The
name of the color of a dog's fur is like the name of a specific text
property for a specific form of markup.

Incidentally talking about 

   ... the difference between using Emphasis and Bold markup tags ...

is confusing, too.  

This confusion is different from the confusion between a changeable
property and the name for a particular appearance.  The confusion
between emphasis and bold is like confusing a cat and a dog.

When you use emphasis and bold, you are speaking about two different
kinds of markup, logical and physical.  (Or other words meaning the same.)

Emphasis is logical markup; in typeset books, it is usually shown
using italics; in Info, underscores.  In typeset books, stronger
emphasis, often called `strong', is usually shown with bold.  In Info,
stronger emphasis is shown with asterisks.

On the other hand, Bold is physical markup.  It only works for typeset
works.  It does not work for speech or for Info, which uses asterisks.
That is why Bold is deprecated in GNU and had been for at least 15
years.

You mention TeX and its daughters.  They are good programs, but they
provide markup for high resolution, printed works, not for other
renderings, such as Info.

For TeX and its daughters, the use of physical markup works since they
are for only one kind of presentation.  Many other typesetting
applications, many `word processors', are also often for only one kind
of presentation.  Unfortunately, while this started out well -- the
programs enabled ordinary people to typeset -- it turned into a
mistake.

Among other reasons, Texinfo and man pages were invented a generation
ago to overcome that mistake.  (Sad to say, bad habits continue and
many still write for a single rendering on paper.)

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                         
    bob@rattlesnake.com                         GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  http://www.teak.cc