Re: Proposal for the deprecation of <blockquote>

2013-08-15 20:02, Karl Dubost kirjoitti:

> The key here is that you just give information about the traceability 
> of the source that's all. Nothing fancy. 

It is fancy that you specify the source of the quotation in an element 
attribute only. Instead of specifying it normally in visible text as you 
would normally, you are relying on implementations to make cite 
attribute content accessible to users and on users actually getting 
this. That's doubly wishful thinking.

The cite attribute was defined for blockquote in HTML 4.0, in 1997. It 
has not gained popularity among implementors or authors during the over 
15 years that have passed. It will not, and it need not.

It is questionable whether HTML specifications should even recommend, 
still less require, support to the cite attribute in user agents. They 
should surely not recommend it to authors. The cite attribute is nothing 
but a pitfall: authors who take it seriously will mistakenly think they 
are giving credits and specifying the source, while in fact almost 
nobody will see that information.

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Thursday, 15 August 2013 19:42:39 UTC