Re: CSS Generated content selection

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 02:17:00 -0400, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU> wrote:

> Sure.  The problem is that it's not clear what the "right" behavior is, and
> hasn't been for at least 8-9 years now.  It's not really worth trying to rip up
> this code until there's a plan for how this should work, and there isn't one yet.

In the case of quotations, may I suggest we deprecate both <Q> and <BLOCKQUOTE>, and introduce <QUOTE>.  Then let the UA decide whether the quote is to be rendered inline with quotation marks around it, or blocked and indented without quotation marks, (or whatever presentation is appropriate for the language, and a quote of that length).

In English, a quote of less than three lines is supposed to be kept in the text, (inline), with quotation marks around it.  A quote of three lines or more is supposed to start a new line, be indented, (blocked), and not have quotation marks around it.  But, in visual rendering of a moderately long quotation, the web developer does not know whether the quotation will wrap to three (or more) lines--that depends on the size of the canvas.

Let the UA count the lines it will need for the quotation, and apply the appropriate presentation.  With a new element, <QUOTE>, the rules could *allow* quotation marks in the content, and render the quotation the same whether they are in the content or not.

This does not solve the overall question of whether a UA should supply presentation markers, (quotation marks, asterisks for bullets, etc), when HTML is cut and pasted into plain text, but perhaps it will help with one of the most frequent problem instances, that of quotation marks.

(I realize that if this passes muster here, it will also have to be submitted to an HTML list.)

Barry

Received on Thursday, 26 April 2007 06:18:02 UTC