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

[Anne van Kesteren]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> That's the problem. Would abusing <cite> for this be acceptable? Do we 
> need another element?

I think that would be acceptable. Although I wonder if CITE would still 
be the right name... Can you still use CITE for persons in that case?

  <p><cite>John E. Simpson</cite> said in <cite>XPath and
   XPointer</cite>: <q>...</q></p>


> I don't particularly plan on ever linking to a urn:, since the likelihood 
> of their being successfully dereferenced is extremely low. I don't think 
> that's really a workable solution.

It is also not really backwards compatible. (However, you already linked 
to a URN once using the CITE attribute on a BLOCKQUOTE...)


>>>yet there is something very different about that one -- it's the title 
>>>of another work. I'd like to be able to style all such titles 
>>>consistently, so they have to be marked up in some way.
>>
>>In that case, would you want to differentiate between ordinary titles 
>>and real citations?  Or is that something that the class attribute could 
>>handle, if needed?
> 
> I don't know. What do people think?

See above.


>>> Movie titles are similar. I'd like my UA to give me a tooltip 
>>> containing information from IMDB for every movie title. With user
>>>  JavaScript I can do this, if there's a way to recognise movie
>>> titles.
>> 
>> Then would you want different markup for book titles, movie titles,
>> play titles, song titles, etc?  Or would you just expect the script
>> to search IMDB for anything marked up with <cite>?
> 
> Again, I don't really know. I could see a use case for a "type"
> attribute (as was suggested earlier in this thread), but that seems
> like a slippery slope. Suggestions?

If we go with something like a TYPE attribute, I hope we can give it a
better name. However, hiding semantics inside the value of an attribute 
is a poor markup design in humble opinion. (Although it also has some 
advantages.)


-- 
  Anne van Kesteren
  <http://annevankesteren.nl/>