[Web4lib] " ...lead to most of the document being markup and not data" - my OPAC

[Jeremy Dunck]

On 10/10/07, Thomas Zimoski <tzimoski at gmail.com> wrote:
...
>
> <font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 128);">Debating</font>
> the <font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 128);">good</font>
> <font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 128);">society</font> : a
> quest to bridge America's moral divide / Andrew Bard Schmookler.
> (Number of characters: 244)

This can only be slightly improved; keyword highlighting is mark-up-y.

An external stylesheet would arguably be better with highlights
spanned.  If there are many such highlights, then it would win in # of
bytes.

...
> Would it be fair to say that economizing on the number of characters
> was not a major consideration in designing this system?  Maybe it
> wouldn't be fair, or maybe it's not important - I don't know.

As ever, context is important, but markup as followed speaks of an
internal bureaucracy.  Does it matter?  Maybe.  Class names like
"normalBlackFont11" miss the point of CSS and suggest coding to spec
rather than to purpose.    I doubt the actual number of bytes matter
unless you're trying to cache high traffic results or dealing with
narrow bandwidth.