[Bug 22996] Modify blockquote element definition to allow citations

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=22996

--- Comment #12 from heydon <heydon@heydonworks.com> ---
(In reply to comment #10)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> 
> > There is also grep output for the indexed pages:
> > https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/377471/blockquote.html
> 
> That file seems to show that while many authors place the source data inside
> <blocquote>, nearly as many place it outside <blockquote>. See my analysis: 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2013Aug/0100.html

Sure, all of the following exist...

a) There were 68 occurrences of class=aut(hor) outside blockquote,
   typically on an element right after (adjacent to) the blockquote.
b) There were 58 <cite> outside <blockquote>, all/most of which
   were used to attribute the author of the quote.
c) There were some 'naked' (classless) adjacent elements after the
   blockquote element were used to provide the name of the author.

... but none of them could be said to actually connect the blockquote to the
"citation" in a compelling way.

As we know, the class "author" does nothing except add a styling hook. The
instances of <cite> outside <blockquote>, are not explicitly associated (like
with a "for" attribute as Karl suggested) and naked, classless elements after
the <blockquote> would just be considered arbitrary flow content belonging to a
common parent of the blockquote. 

I think the important thing to take from this is that, of the following uses of
descendants...

1) 19 <footer>s, several of which were from same web sites/authors
2) 123 <cite> (5 of which were child of <footer>, and 2 of which
   where child of an element of class "author".)
3) 36 occurrences of class="author" on various child elements of
   <blockquote>.
4) Some last-child “naked” elements (without @class) or <cite>,
   were used to designate metadata/authors. Amongst these were
   3 <address> elements, all of which contained a <cite>.

... only <footer>, <cite> and <address> (plus combinations) could be said to be
real attempts to demarcate the metadata from the main content semantically.

Of these, <cite> is not appropriate on its own because the metadata could
require more than a single citation. What would one use to encapsulate these
citations, and other metadata? <address> is a statistical outlier, plus...

"The address element must not contain information other than contact
information."

If I really wanted to include contact information, I'm permitted to place the
<address> inside a <footer>, perhaps alongside some <cite>s et al.

This brings us back to <footer>. 

And _even if_ you don't agree that <footer> is, after all, the best solution
for this, surely <footer> should still be a legitimate (optional) descendant of
<blockquote> (as <h1> etc are) anyway?

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Received on Tuesday, 20 August 2013 09:45:37 UTC