[whatwg] The blockquote element spec vs common quoting practices

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-02-12 19:54, Ian Hickson wrote:

>> The <blockquote>  has been, and will be, rather pointless without markup
>> for “credits” (indication of author and source, which are normally
>> required by law).
>
> What's the use case, other than presentation?

What’s the use case for markup for quotations in general, other than 
presentation? I would say it is just a matter of potential ways in which 
such markup could be used, rather than existing usage—as there can 
hardly be such usage without establish and reasonably consistent usage 
of markup for quotations.

At the same level, “credits” can be used in editing and checking tools 
to verify that all quotations have credits (issuing warnings about those 
that don’t); in automatically generating a list of references; in an 
optional browsing mode where credits are hidden, with a button available 
for opening them; in finding out (even web-wide) which documents quote a 
certain document.

If and when suitable microdata markup will be used inside an element 
designated as

If we think that markup for quotations will not have much practical use, 
then it’s better to omit such markup altogether (and tell people to use 
whatever markup they like, maybe even <blockquote> if they prefer 
indentation). But if we think that quotation markup will become useful, 
then the markup should have an element for “credits” on the same 
optimistic grounds.

The difference between <blockquote> and (for example) <quotation> as 
quotation markup is that the latter has no burden of existing use for 
other purposes. Anyone who plans to do some intelligent processing of 
quotations could expect <quotation> to be quotation markup and nothing 
else, since there is no motivation for using it for other purposes

Yucca