There is no obvious link between sans-serif/serif and meta/object, so this
would just add another formatting tag, bringing HTML closer yet to a
word-processing format. Now if HTML is to evolve in a useful way, it has to
tell browsers about content, not formatting.
In that line, along with the new support for math in version 3, the
introduction of a <meta> tag would seem quite reasonable to me. The need for
such a distinction is common. For specialized litterature in fact (like
mathematical logic prose), some generality could even be useful, e.g. a
<meta1> for text about normal text and a <meta2> for text about meta1-text.
Jacques Du Pasquier
pasquier@cui.unige.ch