RE: Justification for the cite attribute on ins&del

Henri, I think that depends on your definition of a UA.  My expectation (as a browser developer) has always been that an accessibility tool would enable the following of such a link; exposing the link to the AT is our responsibility in the browser.

Was your [2] reference intended to be a separate issue, or were you drawing an analogy?

-Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Henri Sivonen
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 12:40 AM
To: HTMLWG WG
Subject: Justification for the cite attribute on ins&del


http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#cite3
> The cite attribute may be used to specify a URI that explains the
> change. When that document is long, for instance the minutes of a
> meeting, authors are encouraged to include a fragment identifier
> pointing to the specific part of that document that discusses the
> change.
>
> If the cite attribute is present, it must be a URI (or IRI) that
> explains the change. User agents should allow users to follow such
> citation links.

Currently, mainstream UAs don't interoperably fulfill the requirement
of the last sentence quoted above. Therefore, as far as
implementation goes, this counts as a new feature although the
language feature is roughly a decade old[1].

Given that the language feature hasn't gained UA support in a decade,
I think it is time to reassess the demand for the feature and how
well the feature addresses the demand if there even is demand. See
also[2].

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/struct/text.html#adef-cite-
INS
[2] http://canvex.lazyilluminati.com/misc/cgi/issues.cgi/message/%3C44F4892E.9030404%40cam.ac.uk%3E

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Thursday, 11 October 2007 17:24:38 UTC