q an quote and content properties etc.

Hi Bert,

I read your mail and also did write a few lines in reply, but then I stopped
for now since it seems necessary to write a bit more, maybe a new proposal,
to illustrate that:

1) nothing of what you gave as examples is really a problem within XML,

2) to put quotation marks into the presentation part (CSS) instead of the
source structure is a really bad idea, since they reflect text
structure/semantics (like punctuation in general). <em> is part of the
structure, as is <h1> and <p> and <cite> and <q>. That's just the idea of
seperating structure from representation. To put quotation marks into a text
is by definition _not_ a representation task (while the question of how they
are displayed is).

3) CSS examples do badly confuse blockquote with q (or quote). No,
blockquote is _not_ for inline quotes (with quotation marks) that continue
over several paragraphs. Those quotes stay inline quotes. And if their tag
will not be allowed to continue (which itself isn't natural law), their has
to be a property (of q and/or quote) which tells CSS that various of these
tags belong to one (continuing) quote (and maybe which part is the last and
all that). That's something for XHTML, not for CSS! And blockquote - well,
this is something completely different. Block quotes (in real world --for
centuries-- as well as in computers) are quotes that are _not_ a part of the
normal flow of text. They have _no_ quotation marks (never!) but are instead
indented and (usually) printed in a different font size and line height.

Well, the "You look bad," said Ken to Melinda, "'cause you're ugly!"-example
is really not a problem with q, its id (as long as there's no properties)
and well-written style rules.

I'll come back later with this. For the moment: Please don't let Chapter
12.4 of CSS21 become a W3C Recommendation in its present state.

Thanks.

Yours,
Jörg

Received on Sunday, 3 August 2003 09:25:35 UTC