Re: ensuring the existence & enhancing the power of Q

Very well written. Thank you.

+1

At 12:02 PM 4/2/2007 -0500, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:

>PRECIS: proposed, that the Q element use the "src" attribute to point
>to a target document, and redefine the "cite" attribute of Q to
>provide human-comprehensible bibliographic information; this would
>bring Q's attribute set in harmony with the use of the "src" element
>as a actionable target and the redefinition of the "cite" attribute
>to provide a human-readable citation, in harmony with the CITE
>element.
>
>=========================================
>PROPOSED ATTRIBUTE SET FOR THE Q ELEMENT:
>=========================================
>
>a) reuse the SRC attribute in the same manner as it is used elsewhere
>in the HTML/XHTML spec - as a pointer to a specific target;
>
>b) redefine the CITE attribute to bring it in line with the
>conventional semantic meaning of citation, which is to say,
>provenance,
>author, edition/iteration, etc.
>
>here are 2 quick examples (NB: the URIs are fake):
>
>EXAMPLE 1:
><Q src="http://www.archives.gov/docs/constitution.html#a1"
>cite="The Constitution of the United States, Article 1"
> >Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
>or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
>of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
>assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of
>grievances.</Q>
>
>
>EXAMPLE 2:
>
><P>
>Perhaps Mencken's most familiar -- and most often misquoted and
>misattributed -- aphorism is: <em class="air-quote">No one ever went
>broke underestimating the intelligence of the average American.</em>
>What Mencken actually wrote, is far more subtle, and yet even more
>cutting as social criticism: <Q
>src="http://www.menken.org/works/complete3.html#27"
>cite="The Complete Works of H.L. Menken: Volume 3; Tinkle, Ivana,
>editor; (New York, Library of American Literature: 1998), page 27"
> >No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have researched the
>records for years, and employed agents to help me -- has ever lost
>money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the
>plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.</Q>
></P>
>
>Note that in the second example, i have used the EM element to
>demarcate the false quote, allowing me to use CSS to mark the
>misquote with quotation marks, as it is not actually the text being
>quoted, but a common and widespread corruption of the actual quote.
>
>this is how the print convention of encasing a word or idiomatic
>expression in quotes can -- and i believe SHOULD -- be handled, by
>using EM to mark the quoted word, and CSS to provide the emphasis
>-- (or, if you prefer, air-) quotes. Quotation marks are also
>employed to denote euphemism and slash or ironic intent, as in the
>headline:
>
>Kane Found in Love Nest with "Dancer"
>
>thus, the Q element makes a clear distinction that what's being
>dealt with is an actual quotation -- which makes the Q element both
>a logical AND a semantically meaningful element.  as for the use of
>quotes for emphasis or to denote irony or sarcasm, since these are
>simply manifestations of emphasising a discrete string of text,
>they should properly be marked as EM, and styled so as to produce
>open and close quotation marks around the emphasized word or
>phrase.
>
>the Q element is more than merely a textual marker which replaces
>the character entity (&#34; or &quot;) or actual quotation marks
>-- it is an element which can provide REAL context for the quoted
>text thanks to its attributes -- attributes that vastly contribute
>to the comprehensibility of related documents, entire web sites,
>hypertext or XML presentations, and online curricula:
>
>the promise of hypertext has always been that it would revolutionize
>the way individuals -- especially individuals who cannot process
>printed material -- read documents.  the Q element does this by
>allowing the author to provide extra information below the surface
>-- such as hyperlinks -- which the reader can choose to take
>advantage of, or ignore, at his or her choice.
>
>the SRC attribute of the Q element will allow an author to specify
>a URI for the source of the quote without cluttering up the page
>-- enhancing both the readability of the document containing the Q
>element and the ease of comprehension of the document by placing it
>in exact context by hyperlinking directly to the location in the
>original document from which the quote was taken...
>
>moreover, quotation marks aren't always used strictly for
>quotations -- for example, a word or phrase may be encased in
>quotation marks to emphasize a certain word or phrase, as in:
>
>Finally, everything was back to &#34;normal&#34;.
>
>quotes are also employed to denote emphasis, euphemism, and slash
>or ironic intent, as illuminated in the headline example given
>above.
>
>thus, the Q element makes clear that what's being dealt with is
>an actual quotation - which makes the Q element both a logical
>AND a semantically meaningful element....
>
>an author might want to style the quoted text as italic or bold,
>or in different colors, by a font change, etc, instead of using
>quotation marks.  of course, this should and would be controlled
>by use of CSS, but styling alone -- especially if embedded in a
>SPAN element -- cannot convey to the user a vital item of
>important information: namely, that this segment of text encased
>in the Q element is an actual quotation; therefore, use of the Q
>element fits the needs and wants of both the author and the user:
>the author can style the contents of a Q in whatever way pleases
>him or fits in with the "look and feel" (there's another false
>quotation) of the resource, while the vital information that what
>is contained in the Q container it is an actual quotation is
>never lost.
>
>part of my insistence on using, parsing, and rendering Q is that
>i am a screen reader user who would like the Q element to trigger
>a change in the reading voice's characteristics, such as a change
>in pitch or a change of voice (from male to female, male to deep
>voiced male, or whatever the user prefers), just as it provides
>expansions when it encounters the ABBR and slash or ACRONYM
>element, and how some screen-readers know to switch language
>libraries on the fly in response to the "lang" attrribute.  but
>all of this is dependent upon use of the Q element, rather than
>guessing whether content contained in &#34; is semantically a
>quote, or an ironic or emphatic use of quotes (the written
>equivalent of quote air quotes quote or my own habit of using
>quote unquote inline)
>
>i also think that overlapping user sets would benefit greatly
>from the ability to have one's user agent or one's assistive
>technology, a list of quotes in a given document, as it would
>be of interest to some users to have the URI of the quotation
>displayed in the list of quotes' status line, so that they
>are aware to where activating the quote (as opposed to just
>moving to it) will lead them, and so that the end user can
>make an informed judgement on the veracity slash quality of
>resources cited in the document and thus assess the quality
>of the document, itself, as a reliable resource.
>
>gregory.
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>SELF-EVIDENT, adj.  Evident to one's self and to nobody else.
>                      Ambrose Beirce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
>                      http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
>-------------------------------------------------------------

Received on Monday, 2 April 2007 17:45:47 UTC