[Bug 15126] New: <cite> tag should include an intra-article link to a full source citation (such as an MLA or APA citation in scholarly research)

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15126

           Summary: <cite> tag should include an intra-article link to a
                    full source citation (such as an MLA or APA citation
                    in scholarly research)
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows NT
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec author view
        AssignedTo: mike@w3.org
        ReportedBy: robert.miesen@gmail.com
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


According to the current W3C draft of HTML5, the <a
href="http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/text-level-semantics.html#the-cite-element">&lt;cite&gt;</a>
element represents the title of a work. Currently, there is no way to
succinctly specify a link to the full citation of a source in a scholarly
citation format, such as the MLA or APA formats. This shortcoming results in a
diminished markup language where one has to resort to using <a
href="http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/text-level-semantics.html#the-a-element">anchors</a>
which, while succeeds in getting the job done of providing a link to the full
scholarly citation in an article, really should be part of the cite tag because
of the tight semantic coupling of a source citation and a scholarly citation.

For example, the first citation in the Wikipedia article on
<cite>Mercurial</cite> <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercurial">(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercurial)</a>
could be enhanced by using markup such as:
<pre>
&lt;cite fullcitation=&quot;cite_note-announced-0&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/cite&gt;
</pre>
as opposed to the current mechanism:
<pre>
&lt;a href=&quot;#cite_note-announced-0&quot;
wotsearchprocessed=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;span&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;1&lt;span&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
</pre>

Furthermore, this modification to the &lt;cite&gt; tag would turn the discovery
algorithm of a article citaiton analysis and visualization program trivial and
much less error prone than the current mechanisms utilized for linking to the
full citation of a source.

Please consider my proposed addition to the HTML5 language and provide
feedback. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

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Received on Friday, 9 December 2011 08:12:21 UTC