Re: argument for deprecating BLOCKQUOTE in canonical HTML/XHTML

Discussion of BLOCKQUOTE got me thinking about quotes and the cite attribute. If the cite attribute were available for all elements, rather than:

<blockquote cite="http://www.example.com">
<p>Something</p>
<p>Something more</p>
</blockquote>

Something like:

<p cite="http://www.example.com">Something</p>
<p cite="http://www.example.com">Something more</p>

Could be used. It wouldn't be the exact same thing (perhaps a div wrapping the paragraphs with the cite would be), but it would indicate what the author was trying to express: that these are two paragraphs that owe their origin to another author.

Cite could be useful on other elements as well:

<image src="/example.jpg" cite="http://www.example.com" alt="Example Image" />

Would indicate that the image owes its origin elsewhere.

This separates presentation of a quote from the structure of a quote -- but what is the structure of a quote? A paragraph doesn't belong to a quote -- a quoted paragraph is a quote.

Something like this:
<p cite="http://www.example.com#quotes">Lots of text with <span cite="http://www.example.com#quote1">specific examples</span> in it would be rich. And <span cite="http://www.example.com#quote2">logical</span> given how we consider quoting as well.</p>

I can't help but think of the benefit of a quoted paragraph in another language containing a cite and a lang attribute, but still being what it is -- a paragraph.