Re: HTML5's Q element

For IE8, FF 3.5, and Opera 10 (although not Safari 4), this behavior of
adding quotes is done with the default CSS style sheet of the browser; not
in the HTML rendering itself.

If you style q like so:

q:before {
>   content: no-open-quote;
> }
>
> q:after {
>   content: no-close-quote;
> }
>


Then the quotes go away in those 3 browsers.

I'd hope the specification could be amended based on Yahia's excellent
points.


Seth

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 7:23 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> 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.
>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>
>