- From: Toby Inkster <tai@g5n.co.uk>
- Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:02:41 +0100
- To: Smylers <Smylers@stripey.com>
- Cc: HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>
On 11 Sep 2009, at 16:45, Smylers wrote:
> But what does it actually achieve? In what way does a user benefit
> from
> a document having all the people mentioned marked up as such?
It's not a question of having all the people *mentioned* marked up,
but all the people *cited* marked up. A citation is more than a mere
mention - it's an indication that the person or thing cited provides
supporting evidence for the words on the page.
How does a user of the page benefit? I can imagine a bit of
Javascript that, say, highlights nearby <cite> elements when the
mouse is hovered over a <blockquote> or <q> element. Perhaps the
<cite> element immediately before and immediately after, plus any
<cite> elements actually within the <blockquote>, as there's
currently no way of knowing exactly which is the relevant one, though
RDFa maybe could help:
<p xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">
[... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ...] After all, as
<cite about="#ws" property="foaf:name">Shakespeare</cite> said,
<q cite="#ws">a rose by any other name would smell as sweet</q>.
</p>
If HTML 2 and HTML 4 differ on the definition of <cite>, it seems
more sensible to go with either the wider definition (as that will
encompass the narrower one) or the more recent definition, as these
will be compatible with more existing content. The HTML 4 definition
is both the wider definition and the more recent one, so seems the
way to go.
--
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>
Received on Sunday, 13 September 2009 18:03:14 UTC