Re: Wiki summary of q element default styling issues

On 4/25/2016 8:40 AM, Florian Rivoal wrote:
>> On Apr 25, 2016, at 22:35, John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't understand this.  Why would i need to add a class to every q
>>> element?  Surely you'd only need to introduce a class for quotations
>>> when you don't want to follow the default - and if you're using CSS
>>> properly, often you don't even need class names then either, since
>>> the selectors can be written to understand the context in which a q
>>> element sits.
>> Is CSS capable of specifying alternation of marks in nested quotations
>> to arbitrary depths?  My understanding is that it is not.
> I think this should do it:
>
>    q { quotes: toggle("<" ">", "「" "」"); }
>
> https://drafts.csswg.org/css-values/#funcdef-toggle
>
> And even if this function is not implemented, hardcoding things in the markup does not give you more flexibility than doing it with css. The way markup handles arbitrary depth of alternating quotes is by writing the alternating quotes manually. If you can manually write 5, 12, or 57 levels of nested quotes, you can manually writing 5, 12, or 57 level of nested selectors.

First, all style guides will tell you to re-write your text instead of 
piling up quotation levels. So we are talking texts here that are 
pathological.

Second, if I cut and paste something with a <q> element in it, I may 
need to adjust punctuation either before or after the trailing quotation 
mark anyway. (That's what I mean by saying that <q> isn't (can't be) a 
robust container).

Third, it's amazingly easy to find websites that use multiple styles of 
quotation marks for effect in free alternation. The choice appears to be 
driven both by whether the content of the quote is a foreign language as 
well as on whether one style of quote "looks" better than another. It is 
easier to control that like you control any other punctuation, that is, 
by having the author supply it.

A./

Received on Monday, 25 April 2016 16:03:22 UTC