[whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution

[Aryeh Gregor]

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>.

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