Re: ISSUE-48 (marks-content-markup-attribute): 'marks' content markup attribute for Q (quotation) and BLOCKQUOTE [HTML 5 spec]

Robert J Burns wrote:
> 
> Hi Andrew,
> 
> On May 29, 2008, at 3:48 PM, Andrew Sidwell wrote:
> 
>>
>> HTML Issue Tracking Issue Tracker wrote:
>>> For Q (quotation) and BLOCKQUOTE a 'marks' content markup attribute.
>>> Permits authors greater control over the separation of concerns of
>>> styling quotations and specifying the semantics of quotations within a
>>> document. Also allows authors to work around the current state of
>>> interoperability across popular UAs.
>>> for more detailed discussion, please consult the wiki page at: 
>>> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/AddedAttributeQuotationMarks
>>
>> The use-case here is authors wanting to mark up quotes.  There are two 
>> plausible ways of implementing it: just choose one and be done with 
>> it.  Sure, <q> has interoperability issues, so pressure IE to fix it 
>> or the other browsers to stop using quotes; don't invent a new 
>> attribute to permanently embed this weird situation in the 
>> specification.  (Just because other weird things are in now mandated 
>> by the spec doesn't mean that we should keep on adding weird things to 
>> that list.)
>>
>> Whilst I appreciate that hypothetically it would be nice for some 
>> people to specify which way they want things, in practice it won't be 
>> a) useful or b) even make a difference to the vast majority of 
>> authors, so increasing implementation complexity for such a tiny gain 
>> seems, well, silly.  (See "Solve Real Problems".)
> 
> I get the feeling you're not taking the time to understand these issues 
> before responding to them. You should understand that this proposal 
> requires zero implementation whatsoever,

We must have different ideas of what implementation means.

 > let alone leading to too much implementation complexity.

Any changes that are useless have too much implementation complexity.

 > For those UAs already supporting CSS :before
> and :after and attribute selectors and content generation, the only 
> thing required is a change to the UAs default stylesheet.   How can a
> minor change to an implementation stylesheet like that possibly trump 
> the needs of authors and users.

I don't buy into the idea that authors need to have whether the browser 
should include quote marks around element content baked into the syntax 
of the language.  They need to mark up quotes, fine-- they can do that.

> As for telling authors to make up their mind, that's just silly.There
> are clearly reasonable arguments for both quotations as punctuation and 
> quotations as a matter of style.

Indeed, so choose one or the other rather than being wishy-washy and 
having both.  If we applied the philosophy of "where there are 
reasonable arguments for doing things one of two ways, allow both", the 
spec would be insanely bloated.  (Assuming it's not already, which some 
people think it is. :)


My point is merely that given there is no actual gain in allowing 
authors to specify whether they want the browser to add quotes or have 
added them themselves, introducing such a feature *at all* is needless 
complexity.


 > This simple proposal meets the needs of
> both authors while requiring authors happy with the current situation of 
> quotations as matter of style to do nothing with their content. I am 
> quite astonished that this proposal could face any controversy whatsoever.

Cheers,
A

Received on Monday, 2 June 2008 00:08:50 UTC