RE: Wiki summary of q element default styling issues

Richard,
Actually I didnt mean that I use the q element to style quoted text INSTEAD of using quote marks. I use it to style the text (color, italicize, etc.) and also hard code the quote marks (ok, I sometimes accept the default characters).

Regarding: "(NOTE: in this thread i'm looking for views about which language to use when quotation marks are autogenerated, not seeking views on whether they should be autogenerated at all.)"

Perhaps the question could be abstracted a bit. Instead of focusing on quote marks, the focus could be the boundaries for language associated with elements and what are the inheritance rules.
Language border seems loosely analogous to the layout borders for bounding boxes eg margin, padding, etc. in that perhaps the quote marks are in the margin and using external language settings, whereas the content is within the box and uses the internal language. I mention this, because perhaps it is not just quotes that have this issue of which is the applicable language. 
(I don’t have time or I would survey some of the other elements to see if in fact this applies.)

It would be more manageable if there was an architectural pattern to follow rather than linguistic rules that might be very variable by script and language and work one way for quotes and differently for other elements or properties (parentheticals?). Eg :before, :after

Sorry if this is ill-defined or not well thought out. I am crunching on a deadline...
tex


-----Original Message-----
From: ishida@w3.org [mailto:ishida@w3.org] 
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 9:03 AM
To: John Cowan
Cc: Asmus Freytag (c); www International; W3C Digital Publishing IG
Subject: Re: Wiki summary of q element default styling issues

On 25/04/2016 14:35, John Cowan wrote:
> ishida@w3.org scripsit:
>
>> For example, thinking about
>> blockquotes or figures, I don't choose to use blockquote or figure 
>> elements only when i think there's a chance that someone will try to 
>> harvest blockquotes or figures, i use the elements because they 
>> describe the content, and also because they typically come with some 
>> minimally useful default rendering.
>
> Sure, a default *style*.  That's a different story from default 
> *content*, which is what q elements try to provide.

I'm assuming that when you say content you are assuming that the quotation marks are part of the content(?).  They aren't. They are stylistic effects. (Which is why Tex says that he sometimes colours or italicises his quotes, rather than uses quotation marks.)

If you want the quotation marks to be part of your content, you need to type them in and use CSS to set the default styling to no quotation marks.

We're only talking here about what happens when people want the quotation marks to be part of the styling.

>> I don't understand this.  Why would i need to add a class to every q 
>> element?  Surely you'd only need to introduce a class for quotations 
>> when you don't want to follow the default - and if you're using CSS 
>> properly, often you don't even need class names then either, since 
>> the selectors can be written to understand the context in which a q 
>> element sits.
>
> Is CSS capable of specifying alternation of marks in nested quotations 
> to arbitrary depths?  My understanding is that it is not.

see Florian's note.

>> The specific issue that concerns me in this thread is how to ensure 
>> that any fallback default styling best represents what the majority 
>> of people would expect to see.
>
> Is there in fact such a majority view?  It doesn't seem so.


(NOTE: in this thread i'm looking for views about which language to use when quotation marks are autogenerated, not seeking views on whether they should be autogenerated at all.)

Well, it's early days so far, and we need to raise the question more widely, but if i remember correctly, 6 respondents on this thread clearly indicated a preference for quotation marks to follow the language of the text outside the quote.  A further three participated in the discussion without raising objections to that idea.  A further three people i talked with offline expressed the same preference. You and Tex were the only objectors, until Karl joined in, but i think you are actually trying to widen the conversation to include other points and objecting to those.

ri

Received on Monday, 25 April 2016 23:23:02 UTC