[Bug 12990] The footer element (Sections, Elements of HTML). Request for clarification. Re: Interaction of <blockquote> with the prohibition on nested <footer>s. "When the footer element contains entire sections, they represent appendices, indexes, long colophons, ve

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12990

--- Comment #5 from Alan Jenkins <alan.christopher.jenkins@googlemail.com> 2011-08-16 16:08:49 UTC ---


## Why would a letter have a <footer>? ##

In a letter,

<footer>Yours sincerely, Alan</footer>

might be used, to mark up similar information to <footer> in a blog comment, as
used in the example for "4.4.4 The article element".  The letter itself would
have to be an <article> or <blockquote>.

Put that inside "Appendix B: Correspondence" of a book, which is marked as an
appendix by being enclosed in the top-level <footer>, and you have your illegal
nesting.  It's unlikely to happen outside Project Gutenberg, because everywhere
else would put the Appendix in a separate HTML file.



A simpler example might be an Afterword which could be of interest in itself. 
E.g. the print edition of "The Atrocity Archives" (novel published in 2004)
ends with an essay -

  <footer>
    <article>
      <h1>Afterword: Inside the Fear Factory</h1>
        ...

      <footer class="aligned-right">
        Charles Stross<br/>
        Edinburgh, UK<br/>
        April 2003<br/>
      </footer>
    </article>
  </footer>
</body>


The inner footer seems exemplary to me, so I have to stop thinking that
appendices etc. should usually be enclosed in <footer>.  Noting that the spec
doesn't (I think) explicitly _require_ me to do so, and/or that representing
the structure of an entire book is not a priority of HTML5.  Again - if that's
how it ends up, I don't think it's going to be a problem for the cases I'm
thinking of.


Maybe it would be clearer if <article> (and <blockquote?) was also banned
inside <footer>?  Is it ever appropriate to use <article> (or blockquote?) if
you're not allowed to include a <footer>?  I really don't know.


Hmm.  If a "verbose license agreement" in a <footer> was a Free Software-like
license (a standard license released by someone like the FSF), it should be
marked as an <article>, I should think.  If you literally included the entire
text of the Creative Commons license... then it does appear to have a footer of
its own

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
(search for "Creative Commons Notice").


which affects books which are published online as a single HTML file, under the
Creative Commons license.  Historically, that's the preferred format for
conversion into arbitrary offline reading formats.

Here's an example book which includes the full CC license text (footer >
article ?), including the "Creative Commons Notice" (footer > article > footer
?).

http://www.kschroeder.com/archive/Ventus/

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Received on Tuesday, 16 August 2011 16:08:57 UTC