[Bug 22996] Modify blockquote element definition to allow citations

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

--- Comment #20 from heydon <heydon@heydonworks.com> ---
(In reply to comment #19)
> (In reply to comment #18)
> > (In reply to comment #17)
> > 
> > > There's no need to modify <footer>. Whether or not the principle <footer> is
> > > actually quoted from the original source, it is bound to describe the nature
> > > of that content.
> > 
> > +1 Agree. This is not the problem.
> > 
> > > It is a non-issue in most cases and redundant footers can
> > > be omitted by authors in other cases, as they see fit, right?
> > > 
> > > Blockquote should allow <footer> to be used at the author's discretion, just
> > > as > <figcaption> is a discretionary inclusion. Can we agree on that?
> > 
> > While an “about text” could clarify the source of the very quotation,
> > <footer> as “about text” container may cause uncertainty w.r.t. the
> > source of the very annotation w.r.t. whether it stems from the same
> > source as the quotation itself - or from the current text.
> > 
> > This doubt is fuelled by the fact that the footer would change semantics
> > (with regard to authoringship) once it is pasted into <blockquote> - in
> > the original text its voice would be the same as the voice of the
> > section where it appears, whereas inside <blockquote>, its voice would
> > change to mean “the voice of the author of blockquote’s parent element”.
> > 
> > Also, to visually distinguish footer from quotation, the <footer> would
> > probably need to be styled differently when inside <blockquote> compared
> > when outside, and my hunch is that a styling that differs based on context
> > is not going to be popular amongst implementors (but may be I am wrong
> > in this detail).
> > 
> > For more, see bug 23021.
> 
> unconvinced about the nuances of the 'voice' argument or of the styling
> argument. The point of allowing footer in blockquote is to provide a means
> to indicate that some content is metadata about the quoted content, when as
> is common such content is structurally part of the quoted text, but
> semantically separate. 
> 
> Note I have also allowed <cite> for this purpose for in-text attributions.
> 
> It should also be noted that the blockquote element already allows changes
> to the content of quoted text without any markup requirement.
> 
> "The content of a blockquote may be abbreviated or may have context added in
> the conventional manner for the text's language."
> 
> 
> After doing some more reading and research on citations it really seems as
> if to deal with the diversity/complexity of citation styles/formats the use
> of metadata schema is the most appropriate, what we should be providing in
> HTML is a framework to hang these off. I think cite and footer provide this.

Whether the footer is considered "quoted" or "about the quoted content", surely
its purpose is largely indistinguishable. In either case, it is about the
nature of that content.

I don't think it is important whether the content is attributed to an author by
that same author (as in the copyright notice of a page-level/site footer for
someone's website) or by someone else.

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Received on Wednesday, 4 September 2013 10:15:57 UTC