[whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution

[Simon Pieters]

On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:56:11 +0200, Aryeh Gregor  
<Simetrical+w3c at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Oli Studholme <whatwg.org at boblet.net>  
> wrote:
>> <blockquote>
>>  <p>[block quote]</p>
>>  <footer>— <cite><a href="…">[title of work]</a></cite></footer>
>> </blockquote>
>
> This is incorrect according to the current definition of <footer>.
>
>> Footer definition:
>>  “The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor
>> sectioning content or sectioning root element. A footer typically
>> contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to
>> related documents, copyright data, and the like.”
>
> This means it's tied to the nearest <section> or <article> or such.
> It's not supposed to be specifically related to any other type of
> ancestor, like <blockquote>.

<blockquote> is sectioning root.

>> Simon felt that “Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from
>> another source” excludes footer.

s/footer/attribution/

Indeed since it's a conformance requirement, in valid documents the  
content inside blockquote is quoted from another source. If the spec were  
to allow attribution inside blockquote, the above conformance requirement  
would need to be changed to allow it.


>> However the footer definition reads
>> to me that footer is basically metadata *about* content (the
>> non-footer or -header content of the sectioning or sectioning root
>> element).
>
> Correct, but it's supposed to be metadata about the whole section, not
> about just its parent.
>
> However, I don't know if there's any specific way to mark this up.
> It's a common pattern, so it would be a good candidate for adding
> here:
>
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/links.html#common-idioms-without-dedicated-elements
>
> It's useful to be able to put the author info in its own element so
> that you can style it differently.


-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software