Re: [whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution
On Fri, 1 Jul 2011, Oli Studholme wrote: Over at http://html5doctor.com we�ve been using this pattern when quoting e.g. from the HTML5 spec: blockquote p[block quote]/p footer� citea href=�[title of work]/a/cite/footer /blockquote I wrote about our use of blockquote and footer in http://html5doctor.com/blockquote-q-cite/ recently, which lead to http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13082. To recap: Footer definition: �The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element. A footer typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.� Blockquote definition: �The blockquote element represents a section that is quoted from another source. Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source, whose address, if it has one, may be cited in the cite attribute.� Simon felt that �Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source� excludes footer. On what basis? However the footer definition reads to me that footer is basically metadata *about* content (the non-footer or -header content of the sectioning or sectioning root element). I�m happy to propose some reasons for allowing this, but to start with does blockquote�s definition beat footer�s definition? Or, is footer considered content as far as the blockquote definition is concerned? Content in a blockquote is quoted. This includes any footers in it. For example, a page might say: article h1My Opinion/h1 pBla bla bla./p pBla bla bla./p pAnd furthermore, I think fish are friends, not food./p footer pFred is a shark./p /footer /article Another page might then quote that page: pBut the best part is the end, where Fred writes:/p blockquote cite=http://fred.example.net/blog/my-opinion; pAnd furthermore, I think fish are friends, not food./p footer pFred is a shark./p /footer /blockquote pNotice the footer saying that he's a shark! Sharks emlike/em to eat fish, surely./p It's not clear to me why or how the spec is ambiguous here. I've not added this specific example to the spec, but I've added unambiguous requirements regarding attribution. On Fri, 1 Jul 2011, Simon Pieters wrote: Indeed since it's a conformance requirement, in valid documents the content inside blockquote is quoted from another source. If the spec were to allow attribution inside blockquote, the above conformance requirement would need to be changed to allow it. Indeed. On Tue, 5 Jul 2011, Jukka K. Korpela wrote: I was pretty sure that I had seen an example where a blockquote element contained an attribution in a footer. Alas, the “living standard” does not seem to have a version history where I could conveniently check this out. You can see all versions of the spec ever published using the Subversion repository. See the spec header for tools for accessing it. Admittedly, there is some logic in requiring that the content of blockquote be quoted from an external source and nothing more. I wonder whether this disallows common constructs like “[foo]” to indicate that “foo” has been added for clarification and is not present in the source. I've addressed this. Anyway, having a blockquote element but no markup for attribution is very illogical. Indeed. We may fix this in due course. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A/, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: [whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution
2011-07-01 11:26, Simon Pieters wrote: Simon felt that “Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source” excludes footer. s/footer/attribution/ Indeed since it's a conformance requirement, in valid documents the content inside blockquote is quoted from another source. If the spec were to allow attribution inside blockquote, the above conformance requirement would need to be changed to allow it. I was pretty sure that I had seen an example where a blockquote element contained an attribution in a footer. Alas, the “living standard” does not seem to have a version history where I could conveniently check this out. Admittedly, there is some logic in requiring that the content of blockquote be quoted from an external source and nothing more. I wonder whether this disallows common constructs like “[foo]” to indicate that “foo” has been added for clarification and is not present in the source. Anyway, having a blockquote element but no markup for attribution is very illogical. It is a prime rule in proper quotations, and widely even required by the copyright laws, that a quotation be accompanied by an indication of the quoted author and the source of the quotation. I guess we are supposed to believe in the cite attribute—which is not supported by browsers or used by authors, and I don’t see how HTML5 could break this vicious circle. (There is no obvious way how browsers _could_ support it, in a manner that makes sense, i.e. is understandable to users—there is no common paradigm for presenting attributions when you only have a URL to play with.) Besides, it’s clearly insufficient since only the URL can be specified, and surely not all works have URLs, and other types attributions are often far more permanent than URLs. The actual usage of blockquote is mostly for indentation. In practice, it means “indent,” though occasionally the motivation for indentation might be that the text is quoted. Any software that does something on the assumption that blockquote actually means quoted text will get things wrong more often than not. Thus, the attempt at semantic purification will probably achieve nothing. People and authoring tools that use blockquote to indent will keep doing so. People who wish to use proper semantic markup will find out that they cannot: blockquote isn’t a working solution (it’s already tainted as presentational markup), and it’s even less so than previously, since you cannot even “validly” include an attribution in the element but need to use some random element after the blockquote element. However, I don't know if there's any specific way to mark this up. It's a common pattern, so it would be a good candidate for adding here: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/links.html#common-idioms-without-dedicated-elements It's useful to be able to put the author info in its own element so that you can style it differently. People can do that. But this does not result in any useful default rendering, and it does not help indexing robots at all. For block quotations, a fresh start might be better than playing with the blockquote element, which really belongs to the “compatibility area”: its default effect on rendering should be clearly specified, and it could be added that in previous specifications, it has been defined to mean a block quotation from an external source and it has been used in that meaning to some extent. If you think that a semantic element for quotations is needed, then it’s best to add new elements, at least for a quotation and for an associated attribution. -- Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Re: [whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution
On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:56:11 +0200, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Oli Studholme whatwg@boblet.net wrote: blockquote p[block quote]/p footer— citea href=…[title of work]/a/cite/footer /blockquote This is incorrect according to the current definition of footer. Footer definition: “The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element. A footer typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.” This means it's tied to the nearest section or article or such. It's not supposed to be specifically related to any other type of ancestor, like blockquote. blockquote is sectioning root. Simon felt that “Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source” excludes footer. s/footer/attribution/ Indeed since it's a conformance requirement, in valid documents the content inside blockquote is quoted from another source. If the spec were to allow attribution inside blockquote, the above conformance requirement would need to be changed to allow it. However the footer definition reads to me that footer is basically metadata *about* content (the non-footer or -header content of the sectioning or sectioning root element). Correct, but it's supposed to be metadata about the whole section, not about just its parent. However, I don't know if there's any specific way to mark this up. It's a common pattern, so it would be a good candidate for adding here: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/links.html#common-idioms-without-dedicated-elements It's useful to be able to put the author info in its own element so that you can style it differently. -- Simon Pieters Opera Software
Re: [whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 4:26 AM, Simon Pieters sim...@opera.com wrote: blockquote is sectioning root. Oops. I stand corrected, never mind me.
[whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution
Hi All, Over at http://html5doctor.com we’ve been using this pattern when quoting e.g. from the HTML5 spec: blockquote p[block quote]/p footer— citea href=…[title of work]/a/cite/footer /blockquote I wrote about our use of blockquote and footer in http://html5doctor.com/blockquote-q-cite/ recently, which lead to http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13082. To recap: Footer definition: “The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element. A footer typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.” Blockquote definition: “The blockquote element represents a section that is quoted from another source. Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source, whose address, if it has one, may be cited in the cite attribute.” Simon felt that “Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source” excludes footer. However the footer definition reads to me that footer is basically metadata *about* content (the non-footer or -header content of the sectioning or sectioning root element). I’m happy to propose some reasons for allowing this, but to start with does blockquote’s definition beat footer’s definition? Or, is footer considered content as far as the blockquote definition is concerned? Thanks in advance. peace - oli studholme
Re: [whatwg] Using footer in blockquote for attribution
On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Oli Studholme whatwg@boblet.net wrote: blockquote p[block quote]/p footer— citea href=…[title of work]/a/cite/footer /blockquote This is incorrect according to the current definition of footer. Footer definition: “The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element. A footer typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.” This means it's tied to the nearest section or article or such. It's not supposed to be specifically related to any other type of ancestor, like blockquote. Simon felt that “Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source” excludes footer. However the footer definition reads to me that footer is basically metadata *about* content (the non-footer or -header content of the sectioning or sectioning root element). Correct, but it's supposed to be metadata about the whole section, not about just its parent. However, I don't know if there's any specific way to mark this up. It's a common pattern, so it would be a good candidate for adding here: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/links.html#common-idioms-without-dedicated-elements It's useful to be able to put the author info in its own element so that you can style it differently.
