<q> vs. <quote>, naming etc. (was Re: [www-html] <none>)

On 9/26/02 12:26 PM, "Douglas Livingstone" <lists@redmelon.net> wrote:

> From: "Jelks Cabaniss"
>> wholesale renaming, or keep the same names.
> 
> I prefer tag length based on the level according to the structure of the
> document. For example: <html>, <body>, <section> etc are fully structural,
> in comparison to <h>, <p> etc. The question would be, then:
> 
> Do quotes fit more in line with paragraphs than sections?
> 
> In this case, I say <q> is better, because it would be used at the same
> depth as a <p> tag.

Unfortunately I think a misconception has propagated here which needs to be
cleared up.  This is not just a naming issue.

The <quote> tag is NOT the same as the <q> tag.  Very similar, but not the
same.  The <q> tag is supposed to cause the user agent to actually render
quotes around the quotation. Experience and research has shown that while
this could be seen as a nice help for authors to relieve them of the burden
adding in the proper quote characters for a quotation taking into account
depth, quoting styles of different languages etc., the specific quotation
marks to use are still more of an art than a science, and are not very well
determined automatically by a user agent.  Thus the transition from the
HTML4 <q> tag to the XHTML2 <quote> tag.

The <quote> tag, like the <blockquote> tag, does NOT cause the user agent to
render quotes.

The author has to either style the <quote> tag with the proper :before,
content, quotes constructs for the context in one place in a style sheet, OR
the author could insert the actual quotation marks in the content around the
<quote> element.

> I think this holds for the proposed <line> tags too: they should be
> equivalent to quotes in style: <l>.

I agree, and this was discussed recently in the working group.  Expect it to
be fixed in the next version.

Thanks,

Tantek

Received on Thursday, 26 September 2002 16:20:02 UTC