[whatwg] Element-related feedback; attribution element
Jim Jewett
jimjjewett at gmail.com
Fri May 14 17:20:13 PDT 2010
In http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2010-March/025549.html
with a subject of "Element-related feedback", Ian Hixie quoted me and
asked:
>On Fri, 1 Jan 2010, Jim Jewett wrote:
>>
>> Evil Lawyer: So, when did you stop beating your wife?
>> Defendant: Never!
>>
>> "Evil Lawyer" and "Defendant" aren't pronounced. Their meanings (and
>> silence) are deduced from English conventions about punctuation. I
>> would prefer a semantic tag.
Hixie:
> Why? What problem would a semantic tag solve? The default styling here
> seems to not need any particular element; the above is perfectly
> understandable as is as far as I can tell.
For written output, yes, the convention works.
Ideally, a screen reader should *not* read the attribution labels --
but it should use them to switch voices.
>> I'm expecting [scripts] to do something like increase the font size or
>> change the background for lines *I* have to memorize for *my* character
>> [based on the semantic marked in the page identifying the character], or
>> for cue lines that I have to recognize.
> Are there any examples of this in the wild? Since this is technically
> possible today, if it's a use case important enough that we should address
> it, it should be easy enough to find examples of this.
> I'm very reluctant to provide features for hypothetical problems that
> don't stem from a real market need. (If we start solving such problems, we
> would fast find ourselves on the path to feature bloat.)
I haven't acted much since finding the internet. I have seen plenty
of printed scripts in which this was done manually with a highlighter
for rehearsals. I would expect today's equivalent to be done at time
of printing, rather than by a helpful web site.
So the need is there; the question is whether the need is too
specialized (like the various poetry elements) ... if the only use
were scripts, I would say that it was too specialized, but I would
also use it for photo credits (the italicized captions), etc. Whether
that then makes it too much of a catchall element -- maybe.
>> > You're still not saying why you want this element. What would <attrib>
>> > be good for? What UI would it trigger? How would users or authors
>> > benefit?
(Per above, the UI would change voices in a screen reader, and could
be used as a hook for user style sheets in scripts.)
>> I would expect it to be used in License checkers that some organizations
>> would deploy to ensure they aren't violating copyright.
> Wouldn't the Work microdata vocabulary be a better solution to this
> problem?
Possibly. I find that more complicated, but the precision may be
worth the complication.
>> I would expect it to be used by some scrapers looking for stock photos.
> I'm not sure what you mean. Wouldn't fingerprinting the photos be more
> effective?
I was thinking of scrapers acting on behalf of a consumer --
collecting a bunch of photos that you would be allowed to use.
>> I would expect it to be used with custom CSS for some users, who are
>> really looking for a model or photographer rather than an existing
>> photograph.
> I don't understand this case. Can you elaborate? Maybe an example of this
> use in the wild would help.
Some of the original <cite> examples from the wild were really credits
-- they listed the photographer and the model. Plenty of model and
photographer websites are largely devoted to finding each other; I
assume that this is because photographers are looking to find (and
then contact) models with a particular look, while models are looking
to be photographed by photographers skilled in a certain style.
Again, this seems like a fairly specialized need, but I've seen in on
several sites, and it again gets met by an attribution or credits
element.
[On why <cite> should really be read as <title_of_work>, but still
called <cite> for historical reasons]
> > > Why would it be wrong to have an element to style titles [for titles
>> > of works]?
>> Turning around your favorite question, what is the semantic value?
> It provides a way to have appropriate default styling (italics, in the
> visual medium) for a typographic feature that is widely used, while
> allowing it to be easily restyled independent of other uses of italics.
> This is the same benefit <em>, <strong>, <mark>, etc, have.
I think "title of work" is itself a fairly rare case. Normally, it is
enough to just put it in quotes or italics. The times when you care
that it is a title aren't really more common than the times that you
care about attribution.
-jJ
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