Re: Wiki summary of q element default styling issues

On 25/04/2016 14:35, John Cowan wrote:
> ishida@w3.org scripsit:
>
>> For example, thinking about
>> blockquotes or figures, I don't choose to use blockquote or figure
>> elements only when i think there's a chance that someone will try to
>> harvest blockquotes or figures, i use the elements because they
>> describe the content, and also because they typically come with some
>> minimally useful default rendering.
>
> Sure, a default *style*.  That's a different story from default *content*,
> which is what q elements try to provide.

I'm assuming that when you say content you are assuming that the 
quotation marks are part of the content(?).  They aren't. They are 
stylistic effects. (Which is why Tex says that he sometimes colours or 
italicises his quotes, rather than uses quotation marks.)

If you want the quotation marks to be part of your content, you need to 
type them in and use CSS to set the default styling to no quotation marks.

We're only talking here about what happens when people want the 
quotation marks to be part of the styling.

>> 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.

see Florian's note.

>> The specific issue that concerns me in this thread is how to ensure
>> that any fallback default styling best represents what the majority
>> of people would expect to see.
>
> Is there in fact such a majority view?  It doesn't seem so.


(NOTE: in this thread i'm looking for views about which language to use 
when quotation marks are autogenerated, not seeking views on whether 
they should be autogenerated at all.)

Well, it's early days so far, and we need to raise the question more 
widely, but if i remember correctly, 6 respondents on this thread 
clearly indicated a preference for quotation marks to follow the 
language of the text outside the quote.  A further three participated in 
the discussion without raising objections to that idea.  A further three 
people i talked with offline expressed the same preference. You and Tex 
were the only objectors, until Karl joined in, but i think you are 
actually trying to widen the conversation to include other points and 
objecting to those.

ri

Received on Monday, 25 April 2016 16:03:38 UTC