[Bug 23008] Change definition of <cite> to allow it to refer to names of people, not just works

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23008

Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|RESOLVED                    |REOPENED
                 CC|                            |chaals@yandex-team.ru
         Resolution|FIXED                       |---

--- Comment #2 from Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru> ---
Actually, the cite element should be a bit more liberal. There are many ways to
refer to something, and we should accept them as valid content.

I note that both Google and Bing, invalidly according to the spec, use cite for
URLs in their search results. I think it is reasonable on the web to treat a
URL as a reference. 

In practice even a description such as "in <cite>the book about HTML by the guy
with the funny hair</cite> they sometimes say sensible things like <q>and</q>"
seems reasonable, if not the most common case.

I would change the text

"It must include either the title of the work or the name of the author
(person, people or organization) of the work, either of which may be in an
abbreviated form as per the conventions used for the addition of citation
metadata to quoted content."

 to something like

"The content of the element should be a reference in some commonly understood
form, such as the name or a nickname of the person cited, or the work, a URL,
or the like."

(Note that I have changed must to should. Although I am happy with a must
requirement for authors, it is quite difficult to validate whether a reference
is valid or not - there are simple cases, and then there are very difficult
ones).

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Received on Tuesday, 10 September 2013 09:04:48 UTC