Re: <q> vs. <quote>, naming etc. (was Re: [www-html] <none>)

On 9/26/02 5:52 PM, "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> It seems to me the most accessible is to have the quotes inserted by CSS
> but have the UA do that by default, just like <strong> is made bold by
> default but can still be styled using CSS.
> 
> In other words, exactly what <q> is in HTML4.
> 

Well, that is what I used to think as well, but others with a much better
understanding of quotes and quotations as used across various languages
around the world have demonstrated otherwise.  It turns out UAs (short of
some sort of natural language parsing AI) don't have a chance of properly
showing default quote marks that are depth/language sensitive, despite the
fact that a few of us have tried and had some degree of success in limited
contexts.

Hence the change for XHTML2.  If you're curious, read the i18n and HTML wg
archives - I won't pretend to understand the i18n reasoning well enough to
reproduce it here.

Thanks,

Tantek