Re: the Q element and WCAG2

Hi Gregory,

At 18:31 24/08/2006, Gregory Rosmaita wrote:

>this is a reaction to a thread on the w3c-wai-gl emailing list,
>which starts at (long URI warning)
>[http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2006JulSep/0124.html]
>
>although this thread began on a specific list (the guidelines
>group's list, to be precise) i am addressing this post to ALL
>WAI working groups via the XTECH list, as the issue of use
>of the Q element to denote actual quotations is a
>cross-working group matter...
>
>in the post cited above, david macdonald wrote:
>
>quote
>I think we can easily address that concern. We introduce a failure technique
>that says:
>
>Failure: placing spaces between quotation marks and the text they are
>surrounding.
>
>Then we could use Cynthia's suggestion, and make using quotation marks a
>sufficient way to mark up quotations, *and* we could make sufficient
>technique that says using the <Q> element with CSS would be another way
>to meet the SC.
>unquote
>
>i can hardly believe that such an idea - that use of Q is optional
>and use of punctuation marks acceptable - is gaining momentum on
>the w3c-wai-gl list...

I wouldn't say that this idea is "gaining momentum" but rather
"floating around".
I believe it refers to the last call comment 695:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/issue-tracking/viewdata_individual.php?id=695 .

>we shouldn't be advising authors to use hacks
>such as character entities to denote quotations (...)
>
>the Q element is more than merely a textual marker which replaces
>the character entity &#34; or actual quotation marks
>(...)
>please WCAG, don't throw Q out with the bathwater,

What the WCAG WG discussed in last week's telecon was something
different:
because IE does support Q but does not render quotation marks
automatically, the proposal was to
- add quotation marks manually around Q elements;
- add CSS rules to suppress auto-generated quotes in browers
that do render quotation marks for Q elements (Opera, Firefox,
Mozilla).

I hope this proposal is less controversial.

Best regards,

Christophe Strobbe



-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
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tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/ 


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Received on Thursday, 24 August 2006 19:19:55 UTC