Re: use of <mark> to denote notes in quoted text

2013-09-08 11:36, Steve Faulkner wrote:
> thanks Jukka, my question was prompted by the example in the spec 
> using mark to italicise text.
>
> So it sounds like you are saying that to include inline notes as per 
> convention without the need for specific markup to identify it is 
> having been added to the quoted text. Is that correct?
>

I really cannot parse the question above. But my point was that any 
additions to quoted text must be indicated in the text (at the text 
level). This may mean the use of notational conventions or explicit 
remarks, such as "emphasis mine". No markup can make this unnecessary.

If markup would be used as an auxiliary, additional way of specifying 
changes, how useful would it be? As with other markup proposals, there 
might be theoretical possibilities of programs actually making some use 
of the markup, but in this case that would be particularly unrealistic. 
What could software vendors possibly achieve by spending time in 
handling such markup?

I think you are asking the question because you think that <blockquote> 
should contain only quoted text as such. But then the problem is with 
the unrealistic idea that <blockquote> should be defined that way, with 
exactness that greatly exceeds the needs of any foreseeable use of 
<blockquote>.

Years ago, I was fascinated with the idea that search engines could 
recognize <blockquote> and ignore quoted material, or emphasize it, or 
only search for it, depending on user requests. I have not seen anything 
like that happen, and I find it unrealistic, partly because <blockquote> 
in the wild means little less than "indent". In any case, let's wait for 
search engines starting to do such things, and then, if it ever happens, 
worry about nuances like "[T]his" in quotations.

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

Received on Sunday, 8 September 2013 19:47:00 UTC