Re: HTML5's Q element

On Wed, 26 Aug 2009, Yahia Chlyeh wrote:
>
> Having quotation punctuation generated by the user agent is utterly 
> wrong. This discussion has been going from a long time ago in the 
> mailing lists. Quotation marks for the /q/ element should be provided in 
> the source so that 1) non-graphical user agents can represent them, 
> otherwise the content would be flawed,

Why can't non-graphical user agents insert quotes also?


> and 2) to avoid issues that arise when writing content in different 
> languages: in French for example, the reference of the quote is written 
> inside the quote inside quotation marks (..., he whispered, ...) while 
> in English that's put outside the quotation marks;

Indeed.


> there's also problems with punctuation in/outside quotation marks that's 
> different in languages.

Indeed.


> After all these arguments, the best is to prevent automatic generation 
> of quotation marks and notify web authors to add them outside the /q/ 
> element itself, since if quotes generation is preserved, then why not 
> auto generate periods for end of /p/ elements too?

IE8, Firefox, Safari, and Opera all render quotes. We lost this war.

You don't have to use <q> though.

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