- From: Erik Vorhes <erik@textivism.com>
- Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:15:58 -0500
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Gordon P. Hemsley <gphemsley at gmail.com> wrote: > > I was discussing the <cite> element with TabAtkins on IRC and I > proposed analyzing the actual word 'cite'. Using it as a verb, the > definition of 'cite' applies to quotes/quotations, titles, and people, > depending on the context. TabAtkins noted that the first use case is > so far off of legacy implementations, that it wouldn't even be worth > considering for <cite> (especially because we have other elements that > function as such). > > That leaves usages of 'cite' for both titles of works and authors of > works. Putting aside the issue of styling for a moment, these two > pieces of data both fall under the semantic meaning of 'cite'. Thus, > they should fall under the semantic meaning of <cite>. If an author > should have the need to differentiate between the two, I propose that > they use <cite class="title"> and <cite class="author">. > > Thus, I propose the following (which TabAtkins generally agrees with): > > Leave the default styling of <cite> to be italicized for legacy > implementations and allow any reference to any work or author, with > the granularity decided by the individual web developer. +1 for this redefinition. I believe it addresses most common non-title uses of <cite> without opening it up to the kind of confusion/abuse that Ian and others have been concerned about. It has the added benefit of not adding a new element to the spec. > I also propose allowing parenthetical citations and footnote markers > (as is used in the various W3C/WHATWG specifications) to also be > marked up with <cite>, though I'm not sure if TabAtkins agrees with me > on that point. I suppose <a> allows for more functionality in current UAs, but this is an interesting proposition, especially if there were a way to crosslink <cite> used in this way to the original source (or whatever it would point to). Would it be something along the lines of <cite for="aside-id">, or did you have something else in mind? Erik
Received on Tuesday, 6 October 2009 13:15:58 UTC