[whatwg] the cite element

[Andrew W. Hagen]

Ian Hickson wrote:

"I don't really understand what problem this is solving. . . ."

That was interesting about the history of the cite element.

The import of my proposed change is that it would make the cite element
much more useful than it would be than if it were limited to titles.

For example, take a page listing numerous famous quotations. Below might be
one of them:

<li><q>Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal
that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what
they ought to be.</q><br />  -- <cite>William Hazlitt</cite></li>

That works well, yet that would be technically against what the spec
in its current form allows.

A second example. Let's say a web page is to list a citation of a work.

This would be the citation, marked up according to the current HTML spec.

<p>Hawking, Stephen.<cite>A Brief History of Time</cite>. Bantam: New York.
1988.</p>

Most of the citation is not in the cite element.

The following should be an option for web authors.

<p><cite>Hawking, Stephen.<i>A Brief History of Time</i>. Bantam: New York.
1988.</cite></p>

That encases the entire citation in a cite element. The web author can re-style the cite
element as desired.

Cite should be available for untitled works. For example:

Rock critics have universally praised<cite style="font-style: normal">the untitled fourth
album</cite>  by Led Zeppelin.

While people aren't usually typographically marked up, they are cited.

The change would allow things other than titles to be placed into the cite element.
That would make cite much more useful.

Andrew Hagen
contact2009 at awhlink.com