Re: UA style sheet for <q>-- why required?

2008/10/30 Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com>

> [Quoting, I think, Robert Burns]
> > I've seen no one expound a compelling reason for not leaving quotation
> > styling to a styling mechanism instead of hard coding the styling in
> > the HTML document.
>
> Correctness.  The HTML is supposed to be usable even with stylesheets off.


It's important to note there is a difference between the OP's phrase
"styling mechanism" and your phrase "stylesheets". A styling mechanism need
not be implemented with stylesheets.


> If Bob says <q>I'll be a monkey's uncle!</q>, then the stylesheets are
> effectively required.


Even when stylesheets are "off" in many browsers, all this means is that
only the browser's default stylesheet is applied (i.e. not stylesheets
supplied by the author). In such cases, if the default rendering of <q> is
the one given for English in [1], then <q>I'll be a monkey's uncle!</q>
would render as "I'll be a monkey's uncle!" . In other words, there wouldn't
be a problem.



> If Bob says "I'll be a monkey's uncle!", then it works for most
> people, but the quotation isn't semantically marked.


Correct. I think that if the author wants to use quotation marks in this
way, that's alright and should not be prohibited in HTML 5. (After all, If
the author doesn't need the semantics, I don't see a need to force him/her
to use <q>.)

If Bob says "<q>I'll be a monkey's uncle!</q>", then it works for most
> people, and degrades properly


Not in browsers that implement the HTML 4.x spec properly, it doesn't. In
these cases, it renders as something like: ""I'll be a monkey's uncle!""

What we really need is a way to say the moral equivalent of
>
>    If there is a stylesheet rule to supply marks to <q> elements
> (:before, :after),
>    then any hardcoded quotation marks immediately preceding or following
> the
>    <q> element are implicitly removed.


No, we don't. See [2].

Regards,

Sam

[1]http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/generate.html#quotes-specify [2]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Oct/0243.html