On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Rimantas Liubertas wrote:

> <...>
> M> Perceive that difficultly a content within a <NOBR>
> M> would be, suddently, removed from there -- if a certain content was inserted
> M> within a <NOBR> tag, it's because such content, effectively, require no
> M> wrapping. Consequently, the behavior of the <NOBR> is eminetly structural
> M> ( HTML ), it is not, merely, "formatational" ( CCS ).
> <...>
>
> Sorry, I do not get how can you see wrapping as not "formatational".

I guess it meant "presentational".

> What meaning does it get say in aural media?

Maybe 'no break'? For example, if a speech browser is set to read very
slowly (maybe because the user has a cognitive disabilities), the browser
could treat <nobr> as indicating that the words inside it belong together,
so no prolonged pauses should occur inside it.

> Other elements say you something about content - is it heading, list,
> paragraph or maybe quote.

In Strict, you mean? Though even in Strict, <span>, <div>, <script>,
<noscript>, <pre> and <br> and a few others are under some suspicion.

> <nobr> says you nothing - except that this
> line/piece of text should not wrap when presented in visual media.

Well, I don't deny that such usage is the real reason for <nobr>, though
some good reasons could be given too. In some cases, <nobr> corresponds to
very close structural connection between "words", such as in
<nobr>500 000</nobr> (in languages and practices that use a space as a
thousands separator) or in <nobr>%20</code> (when discussing URL encoding
for example) or in <nobr>-1</nobr>. But for the most of it, it is needed
because it is the only effective weapon against line breaking rules that
browsers actually apply. Other weapons typically hurt the innocent.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/