Re: Feedback on the current editor's draft

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>>> Could there be a more generic way to cite content coming from other 
>>> sources than introducing a <section> element?
>> I don't support the cite attribute on any element, because it's 
>> "invisible" metadata by default in browsers. I think sources should be 
>> pointed at by <a href> that Just Works even in legacy UAs.
> 
> The Atom conversion spec also allows <a href=... rel=bookmark> to be used 
> instead of <article cite>. However, that doesn't address all the relevant 
> use cases -- in particular, Chaals said he wanted hidden metadata to 
> identify the source of sections of pages he edits.
> 
> If there is a desire to not have this attribute, however, I'm quite happy 
> to remove it.

I think both @cite and @pubdate should be removed from the sectioning 
elements. I believe Chaals' original usecase that led to the 
introduction of the cite attribute was managing intranet content. 
However this kind of information does not require a global shared 
vocabulary; it seems that the use case would be better addressed by 
using one of the several mechanisms for embedding custom data into HTML 
documents.

The pubdate attribute shares the problem of being hidden metadata and, 
for its primary usecase (automatic conversion to atom) it is highly 
likely to duplicate existing visible data. This seems like a 
particularly problematic design. Instead it would be better to reuse the 
<time> element somehow e.g. adding some attribute that indicates that it 
represents the publication date of its closest ancestor section element.

Received on Friday, 14 August 2009 10:28:42 UTC