Re: Don't require <Q>

Len, I am glad you brought this up.  My small ego dictates that point out
that I have tried to raise this issue a few times.  The first occurrence was
almost two years ago.  Please reference URL:
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/1999JanMar/0405.html>

It was actually this checkpoint that made decide to settle for Single-A
compliance.  Kynn would be pleased to know that missing AA didn't scare me
off most of the other P2 and P3 items.

Wendy, I would argue that the checkpoint is fine as written.  But then, I
though 3.1 was okay too!  Yes, MS and Netscape's conformance to the
specifications is anemic (to be charitable).  I don't think P2 and P3 items
need to be watered down to accommodate unreasonable performance of the
browsers.  We spent a lot of time debating 3.1 only to agree that it meant
exactly what it said.  Yes, the errata was a minor improvement, but not so
much so to make up for the time lost when we could have been working on WCAG
2.0.

Len, you might also be interested that MSIE on the Mac DOES render <Q>.
Unfortunately, it does this WRONG as it uses neutral quote marks instead of
typographical (left and right) marks.  Netscape Gecko has the same
brain-dead behavior.  Hmmm.  If it bugs me that much, maybe I should switch
to AOLPress?  The short of it is that MOST _modern_ browsers do something
logical with <Q>...</Q> (this wasn't true when the guidelines were first
posted), so leave the checkpoint alone!

FWIW, MSIE/Mac pop-up behavior is different too, so you may wish to note
this in your ALT/TITLE page.

Cheers,
Bruce


Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20010115195915.00b3d7a0@localhost>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 20:03:02 -0500
To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
From: Wendy A Chisholm <wendy@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Don't require <Q>

Note that <Q> is not required. It is an example but it does not appear in 
the checklist. I agree that it is a bad example because it is not 
supported. Therefore, I propose that we add an Errata that changes the 
wording of this checkpoint to read,
<blockquote>
<dl>
<dt><a name="entry-9">9.</a> Correction to example text for checkpoint 3.7
<dd>Added: 15 January 2001
<dd>Type: Clarification
<dd>Refers to: Checkpoint 3.7
<dd>Description.  Checkpoint 3.7 should be reworded to remove the example 
for Q as:
3.7 Mark up quotations. Do not use quotation markup for formatting effects 
such as indentation. [Priority 2] For example, in HTML, use the BLOCKQUOTE 
element to markup quotations.
</blockquote>