- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 03:50:42 +0000 (UTC)
On Mon, 1 Dec 2008, Calogero Alex Baldacchino wrote: > Ian Hickson ha scritto: > > On Sun, 30 Nov 2008, Calogero Alex Baldacchino wrote: > > > > > I'm not sure I'm understanding the whole function of the <cite> > > > element, and perhaps I'm bothering again with ids and references, > > > but the relationship between a <cite> and a quotation could be > > > disambiguated by coupling an id and a reference to that id. > > > > Why is the ambiguity a problem? > > Well, it depends on the uses the <cite> element is targeted to. If the > 'only' purpose (and such can be enough) is to provide the semantics of a > citation in a media-independent manner and as well a stronger fashion > than a 'general purpose italic' can do, but regardless of the actual > subject taken from the cited source (which finds in the <blocquote> and > <q> elements a proper, independent semantics), the ambiguity shouldn't > be a problem: the end (human) user consuming the document should be able > to correctly relate the cited source to the quoted subject just by > extrapolating it from the surrounding prose, unless such text were > really unintelligible (but even in this case, disambiguation would be > out of the <cite> scope, with the above semantics). I agree. The question is, is there any other purpose? So far, nobody has really made a compelling case that there is. > Otherwise, if there were any good reason to explicitly relate the source > to the subject, or viceversa, i.e. to make it intelligible to a user > agent (perhaps a bot grouping and joining in one document all contents > taken from the same source, by parsing a series of articles? - surely > there must be some better ways to accomplish that, but perhaps such > could make sense for a somewhat purpose), then the ambiguity concern > might be addressed by the mean of a well defined relationship in terms > of html semantics. I just tried to suggest a solution to a concern I > thought you and Sam Kuper were discussing for some reason, since there > is no way to correctly define such a relationship in terms of relative > positions, as you pointed out. I agree that if we wanted to make an explicit relationship, we could make one (e.g. using for="" on <cite>, or adding a second attribute to go along with cite="" on <blockquote> and <q>). But it's not clear to me that it is useful enough to be worth it. Cheers, -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Sunday, 30 November 2008 19:50:42 UTC