In the help files, some text is a menu entry path (e.g. Insert - Image) and most of these have a bold tag (<emph>) though we have a dedicated page for menu entry paths (<item type="menuitem"></item>), but visually there isnt a difference between these two in the help viewer or in the wikihelp, so is there a benefit of replacing all these <emph> entries with <item> entries.
> is there a benefit of replacing all these <emph> entries with <item> entries (This is a question – please use punctuation.) Yes, there is a difference, and it’s comparable to the difference between the <i> and <em> tags in HTML. That difference is semantic: <em>, which stands for “emphasis” (as our <emph>) and should be used for that; <i> is meant to be used for, e.g., foreign terms. Both HTML tags usually have the same visual outcome, but that doesn’t mean you should confuse them and use them interchangeably. Now, in our case, <item type="menuitem" /> is much clearer and less ambiguous than <emph>. Although longer, it actually helps translators to format their strings with ease, it’s correct semantically, and it could be styled differently in the future without affecting other places that use <emph> for entirely unrelated purposes. Of course, we just can’t do a mass swap because everything would need to be retranslated, so it’s blocked – and unfeasible as we plan to move to wiki-based help, where we have special formatting templates, such as my {{breadcrumb}}.