[whatwg] [web-apps] 2.7.8 The i element

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Rob Mientjes wrote:
> >
> > Well, it would just be for people, vehicles (ships), that kind of 
> > thing. I wasn't imagining that people would want to use it for 
> > technologies.
> 
> Well, a NAME element sounds like it may be used for it (and ambiguous 
> naming and spec defining leads to tag abuse, no?).

We don't want any vague spec defining, if anyone sees any, let me know so 
we can fix it! :-)


> > Would it make sense to allow it for books? I don't know. Maybe the 
> > <cite> element needs a "type" attribute that takes values like 
> > "person", "ship", "publication"? What other names do people want to 
> > mark up?

I actually meant the <name> element should, although one option is indeed 
to co-opt <cite> for this (I don't really like that idea though).


> That feels like something much better. That way, you can talk about 
> <cite type="person">Anne van Kesteren</cite>, <cite type="publication" 
> (publication sounds a bit vague, maybe something along the lines of 
> source?)>A Dao of Web Design</cite> and maybe better something such as 
> <cite type="object">Titanic</cite>. This deserves some serious 
> attention, cause well, ship is rather silly ;)

Yeah. For <name> that might work better though.

The thing is we don't want to start making people do:

   <cite><name type="person">Ian</name></cite> said <q>Hello</q>.

...when all they need to do is write:

   Ian said "Hello".

Is there any advantage to marking up people's names?

Maybe we should just let ship names be marked up by <i> (it is, after all, 
an instance of use of a term, as it were), and say that <cite> can be used 
for any reference to a publication, including those that aren't really 
citations ("my favourite book is <cite>...</cite>").

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'