Re: q, quote, blockquote

+1 to punctuation not being "style."

Punctuation is part of the language to be marked up, not the element or
style itself, or at least it should be. If we start marking up quotation
marks, versus identifying blocks of text to be styled differently, b/c they
happen to be quotes and we want them to look different, then we should -
following the same logic - get rid of periods and have a <sentence> element,
and a <question>, etc.

Apologies for the giant run on <sentence> ; )

If it serves a purpose to break out quotes for presentational issues - or to
provide a deeper level of context, there should be a mechanism for that. But
abandoning common punctuation marks doesn't seem to be the way to move
forward.


Dylan Smith




on 9/10/07 1:54 AM, Ben Boyle at benjamins.boyle@gmail.com wrote:

> 
> I see them making the same (not "more") sense, however by using the
> existing elements we gain backwards compatibility (with both existing
> UAs and the "cowpaths" of existing authored content).
> 
> I don't know that there's any particular preference for tagnames vs
> classes, but I think the HTML specification is more about defining
> elements and attributes, and class names are reserved for extensions
> to the language. The extensions might be specific to a document or
> site, or shared amongst a community like microformats. In either case,
> it would be bad for us to define any classes as they'd likely clash
> with extensions. Maybe @role is an alternative (I don't know much
> about it).
> 
> As for formatting, on a personal soapbox I've never believed that
> punctuation was "style" and much prefer punctuation to be embedded in
> the HTML. Punctuation is itself a form of markup, and extremely useful
> to many tools that parse/understand language (screen reader being an
> obvious example). "Mark Up" in the HTML sense has always been, to me,
> about marking up written language. Written language includes
> punctuation. It's not about replacing written constructions with new
> verbose "tags". Well, it doesn't have to be about that.
> 
> Sometimes I go so far as to use quotation marks rather than <q> or
> <blockquote>. I know, I'm completely out of control.
> 
> Fair suggestion though Charles. XHTML2 sort of takes a similar
> approach by moving many semantics from tagnames into specific
> attribute names (e.g. @href, @src, and the edit module). Class names
> are left undefined open for custom extensions.
> 
> cheers
> Ben
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/8/07, Charles Hinshaw <charles@everydayrevolution.com> wrote:
>> This may be a little late in bringing this up, but I was just looking
>> through the wiki (MuchAdoAboutQ) -
>> 
>> Why do we have need any of these elements? A quote is not a structural
>> building block in the same sense as a paragraph. That is to say that a
>> quoted paragraph is still just a paragraph -- it just happens to originate
>> with another author.
>> 
>> Wouldn't something like:
>> 
>> <p>Einstein said <span class="quote" src="http://www.example.com/"
>> cite="Human-comprehensible bibliographic information" >I don't know what
>> will be used in the next world war, but the 4th will be fought with
>> stones</span>.</p>
>> 
>> or
>> 
>> <p class="quote" src="http://www.example.com/" cite="Human-comprehensible
>> bibliographic information" >Most people go on living their everyday life:
>> half frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragi-comedy that
>> is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of
>> the world.</p>
>> 
>> or
>> 
>> <div class="blockquote" src="http://www.example.com/"
>> cite="Human-comprehensible bibliographic information" >
>> <p>The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight
>> from wonder.</p>
>> <p>The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its
>> solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental
>> skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems
>> from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in
>> science.</p>
>> </div>
>> 
>> make more sense semantically?
>> 
>> As for formatting quotes, all three would rely on CSS.
>> 
>> Charles
>

Received on Monday, 10 September 2007 09:15:10 UTC