How to deal with various combinations of <b>/<strong> & <i>/<em>

akamustang commented:

I think "never show the b/i buttons" will be fine as it encourages best use of s/em.

Should probably add a note of this somewhere though, README.txt perhaps.

My turn. ;)

Personally, I really can't see using S and EM buttons, like, ever. I mean, look at pretty much any software that employs WYSIWYG:

Microsoft Word:

Google Docs:

WordPress:

The distinction between <b> and <strong> and between <i> and <em> is something that only makes sense to a) web people and b) highly proficient web people, at that. Definitely not content authors, which is Spark's primary audience.

So I would propose a fourth option, which is:

d) ALWAYS use a single B and a single I button. If a situation arises where there are going to be two B and I buttons (meaning *both* <b> and <strong> (or <i> and <em>) are enabled in a filter configuration), the single B should output <strong> and the single I button should output <em>.

This button smooshing map should be in a variable which can be overridden in settings.php for people who are building blogging websites for W3C nerds, since that's both a valid use case and also the only people I can think of who actually know and care about the difference between <i> and <emphasis>. :)

Oops. Which I realize now is pretty similar to " - never show the b/i buttons" :D