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

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Jan 7, 2007, at 7:13 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>
> At 20:12 +0100 UTC, on 2007-01-03, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> ...
>> Well, the reason I started this thread was to provide a replacement /
>> alternative to the cite="" attribute as defined for the <blockquote> 
>> and <q> elements using some terminology the HTML5 proposal already 
>> provided. Mostly to make the metadata more "visual".
>
> It's still entirely unclear to me *why* the cite attribute needs a
> replacement. What is wrong with it?
> ...

First, it's hard for UAs to present cite= in a way that is both usable 
and backward compatible. (Just changing a cursor isn't discoverable 
enough. Putting any extra button etc in the page might mess up page 
layouts, though it might work if it was placed in-line at the end of 
the quote.)

Second, it's hard for authors to use it in a way that is 
backward-compatible. That is, if the source information is important 
enough that it needs to be accessible in those UAs that don't (yet) 
support cite=, the author has to provide the information in some other 
fashion too.

And third, it requires the existence of an IRI of some sort. Often you 
won't have this, for example when the source information for your quote 
is something as vague as "attributed to Mark Twain".

(None of this is new, just a summary of what I understand from the 
discussion so far. I'm still thinking about alternative markup.:-)

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/