[whatwg] <blockquote cite> and <q cite>

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> nor do I see how <cite a=URI> provides a way to have visual metadata
> that <q cite=URI> does not already. (Not to mention that <q cite=URI>
> allows authors to provide markup that can be understood by older UAs.)

I assumed Anne meant something like:

<q>rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb</q> [<cite><a href="www.example.com">Nemo,
Works, IV</a></cite>]

Which would be backwards compatible, but wouldn't unambiguously connect
q and cite. Which is a major disadvantage in my view.

> FWIW, I find iCab's implementation quite usable: indicating that metadata is
> available by a cursor change when hovering over the data, and allowing to
> directly open the cite attribute's URI (in a new window) through the
> contextual menu's "Show Reference" command. (I'm not fond of
> 'hover-dependancy' like this, but through CSS a more easily recognisable clue
> can be added. For instance something like the dotted underline that has
> become somewhat common, to indicate title attributes for abbr and acronym.)

Thanks for letting us know about this. I don't have a nice shiny Mac and
hadn't thought of looking into iCab's implementation. I'm happy to hear
it's not dissimilar to my own.

If anyone can think of an unambiguous, non-disruptive indicator for
cited quotations, I'd happily attempt to add it to my implementation.
I'm a bit unsure about underlining, since that's already got quite a lot
of meanings and potential conflicts.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis