Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, tjeddo wrote:
> 
> I believe that the current HTML5 spec is heading in the right direction 
> by narrowing the meaning of the cite element compared to its ambiguous 
> use in HTML documents in the past. Overloading the meaning of the cite 
> element further by using it to distinguish speaker's names would not 
> only add ambiguity but would require developer's (who want to honor 
> typographical convention) to undo the default italics styling that would 
> be applied to the speaker's name when enclosed by  tags.

Indeed.


> I feel it is an improvement to HTML that the cite element is being 
> focused to specify the "title of a work." It is however unfortunate that 
> the element's name is 'cite' for legacy HTML reasons.

True. The name is pretty close -- it's in fact closer for most people than 
I realised it was, in fact, since people interpret HTML4's definition as a 
superset of HTML5's, and not a subset, as I do -- but as with many things 
in HTML5, it's certainly not ideal.


> I would much prefer the name of the cite element be reserved for a 
> purpose equivalent to the use of \cite{} in LaTeX.
> 
> However, given the ambiguity of the HTML4 specification as to the 
> correct usage of the 'cite' element, I'm wondering if we shouldn't align 
> the 'cite' element with a more intuitive use case matching that of 
> satisfied by \cite{} in LaTeX. And introduce a new inline element called 
> 'tow' (title of work) or 'tor' (title of reference), for example, to 
> explicitly specify the "title of a work."

\cite{} in LaTeX is basically a cross-referencing mechanism: you define a 
bibliographic entry, and then you can generate a cross-reference to it 
using \cite{} in the main text.

This use case is already handled by  -- for example, the HTML5 
spec has a bunch of bibliogaphic entries at the bottom, written as:

   [X690]
   http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com17/languages/X.690-0207.pdf";>Recommendation
   X.690 — Information Technology — ASN.1 Encoding Rules —
   Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical Encoding
   Rules (CER), and Distinguished Encoding Rules
   (DER). International Telecommunication Union, July
   2002.

...and then to reference them, I just write:

   [X690]

I think is adequate. It doesn't support more advanced use cases like 
automatic reference generation when copying and pasting, but that can be 
handled by microdata.

Now, if we do in fact conclude that the use case for \cite{} is already 
handled by , that leaves us with the choice of what to do for 
titles of works. We could make  obsolete and introduce a new 
element, with the same default styles, and with a better name, like  
or  or  or something. However, support for the element would 
take years to be deployed enough to be usable, and in the meantime 
browsers would still have the support of , so this would not be a 
cheap solution. On the other hand, if we just reuse , by slightly 
adjusting the definition in HTML4, we end up with a solution more or less 
for free.


> In fact, the two examples given in the HTML4 spec for using  are 
> both incorrect according to the current HTML5 definition:
> 
>  - "As Harry S. Truman said,"
>  - More information can be found in [ISO-]."

Sure, but then many of the examples in HTML4 aren't even conforming to 
HTML4, so that's not necessarily a big concern. :-)


> By the way, what is the reasoning in the HTML5 spec for stating that 
> ship names should not be marked up with  but should use  
> instead?
> 
> I guess I'm saying, why are ships not considered "works?"

I suppose one could indeed make a somewhat convincing argument that a ship 
is a work. I'm not sure I'd want to try to sell that though. I've removed 
the sentence that says a ship isn't a work, but I haven't added ships to 
the list works.


> Here are three references that indicate specifically that Ship names
> receive the same typographic treatment as other titles of works.

Oh I agree that they do; that's why  is suggested. So should emphasis.


On Tue, 6 Oct 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> >
> > Is there as much semantic value in pointing to the primary source of a 
> > statement as there is in knowing that the word "earth" refers to the 
> > planet and not the dirt, for example? If so, what is that extra value?
> 
> Identifying speakers and other sources of attribution have multiple 
> use-cases, as identified previously to this list. Such uses are often 
> extra-contextual, unlike your example of "earth." I don't know how 
> otherwise to respond to such laughably obvious "reductio ad absurdum" 
> arguments.

I'm not aware of any use cases that have been put forward that  
addresses adequately and that are compelling enough to need solving. Could 
you list them explicitly?


> It may not need to be , per se, but that is the element that has 
> been used in examples of multiple kinds of quote + attribution markup 
> patterns. And since the WG has a general aversion to creatin

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[tjeddo]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Gordon P. Hemsley  wrote:
> I also propose allowing parenthetical citations and footnote markers
> (as is used in the various W3C/WHATWG specifications) to also be
> marked up with , though I'm not sure if TabAtkins agrees with me
> on that point.
>

I agree.  In fact I argue that this is should be the primary use case
for the cite element (i.e., acknowledging sources). The current HTML5
draft definition provided for the cite element is inconsistent with
the HTML4 specification, and furthermore now prohibits the cite
element from being used for actual in-text citations as it was
primarily intended for in HTML4 (see below) . I believe it would be
most beneficial to provide a new element to simply markup the title of
works, or just settle for using the  or  tags, and reserve
the cite element for true in-text citations.

To support my point here are some relevant quotes and characteristic
examples given from the HTML4.01 specification [5].

Here is the definition provided for the cite element in HTML4.01.
"CITE: Contains a citation or a reference to other sources [5, p. 91]."

The HTML4.01 specification provides the following examples
demonstrating the uses of the cite element:

"As Harry S. Truman said, The buck stops
here. [5, p. 91]"

and more importantly

"More information can be found in [ISO-] [5, p. 91]."

Both these examples are now illegal under the current HTML5 draft
definition for the cite element. While clarity certainly needs to be
provided on the usage of the cite element; it is the second example
that most closely matches the spirit and intention of the definition.
That is, in-text citations. HTML5 should focus on refining the
specification to handle this second in-text citation example. I've
taken a shot at formalizing the emerging concepts people have been
discussing on this mailing list to support valid in-text citations
using the cite element. For those looking for the value proposition in
all this, you can skim to the end of the email.
Constructive criticism and corrections are appreciated.

A Proposed Markup Scheme for the CITE element in HTML5

I've sampled a variety of passages containing real citations to markup
in the emerging citation scheme that is being discussed on this
mailing list. This way I don't have to overly contrive my examples. My
goal here is to illustrate how the cite element can be revised to
support first class citation support in HTML5.  Also, all these
examples are taken from sources about writing so there is a good
chance we will all agree they are valid examples.

Example 1A [1]:
Human beings have been described as "symbol-using
animals" (Burke 3).

Candidate HTML5 Markup:
Humans have been described as
symbol-using animals
(Burke 3).

Note: The cite element is used here to make the citation
relationship between the paraphrased/quoted content
and the original source explicit. The 'for' attribute indicates
the paraphrased/quoted content that, in this case, is the
content of the span element with id="symbols". The href
attribute provides a URI that resolves to a bibliography
entry (in this case on the same page), or an actual online
resource that contains the paraphrased/quoted content.
HTML5 aware browsers would render the "(Burke 3)" text
as a hyperlink that would move the browsers displayed area
to the fragment "#bib-burke" on the same page
(the bibliography entry). This could alternatively be an
explicit URI with or without a fragment identifier appended
that navigates to a separate page.

Example 1B [1]:
Human beings have been described by Kenneth Burke as
"symbol-using animals" (3).

Note: An MLA-valid variant of Example 1A

Candidate HTML5 Markup:
[Option 1]

Human beings have been described by
Kenneth Burke
as symbol-using animals (3).

Note: It is the content of the whole sentence and not just
the part between  tags that needs to be attributed to
the author, therefore something like option 2 may be more
appropriate.

[Option 2]


Human beings have been described by
Kenneth Burke
as symbol-using animals (3).



Note: Here an empty cite element is provided with just
attributes to make the citation relationship between
the cited content and the original source explicit.
 tags around the author's name can be optionally
added to provide a hyperlink from the author's name to the
bibliography entry.

Example 2 [4, p. 7]:
For this reason, the American computer scientist Leslie Lamport
has developed the LaTeX format (Lamport, 1985), which provides a
set of higher-level commands for the production of complex
documents.

Candidate HTML5 Markup:
For this reason, the American computer
scientist Leslie Lamport has developed the Latex format
(Lamport, 1985),
which provides a set of higher-level commands for the production
of comple

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Jim Jewett]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, Jim Jewett wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> > On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>> >> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:


...
>>  points to a primary source of the statement,
>> as opposed to an someone merely named by the
>> statement.

> I hate to be so repetitive, but why is that beneficial?
> What is the semantic value of this?

You are welcome to say that argument by authority is so weak as to be
invalid, but it still happens.

Similarly, you are welcome to say that the academic habit of crediting
other authors (sometimes but not always for specific publications) is
silly, but it still happens.

> Is there as much semantic value in pointing to the primary source of a
> statement as there is in knowing that the word "earth" refers to the
> planet and not the dirt, for example? If so, what is that extra value?

I recently saw a .sig (where, by who?) with a quotation of one
character asking whether another character had said something.  I
could link to the archived email by title, but it has nothing to do
with .sig.  I could fake up a title, such as "Steven Bethard's .sig".
But that can get really awkward when referring to something informal.
"The Hiphopopotamus, in something that I couldn't identify even if I
saw it, but which I am titling as the original source of the .sig
quote".  The .sig itself (if the message weren't in plaintext) could
refer to an episode title, but ... that would be a little too pedantic
for a .sig quote.

"The Hiphopopotamus" seems a much more reasonable solution.


>> dialogues and transcripts and credits and theatrical scripts are all
>> arguably too fine-grained for a "citation", as opposed to a "label" or
>> "attribution", but they are certainly real use cases where the
>> attribution is important.

> Why? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm trying to get to the use case
> that means that there is an actual benefit to what you are asking for.

They are all cases where "who said it" or "who did it" is important --
sometimes far more important than what they actually said or did.
Reversing the characters in a dialogue can change the meaning.
Changing the attribution of an statement containing "I" in a criminal
trial can have important consequences.

> What does  do that you want?

It says who to praise/blame/question for the original thought and/or
expression, as opposed to the decision to repeat (and possibly
ridicule) it.

That may not matter much in a technical discussion, but matters in
lawsuits and it matters (for different reasons) in academics.

>> These three are even cases where print sources will typically shift
>> font in some way between the attribution (Mephistopheles) and
>> the actual statement, though not always in the same manner.  Of the
>> three that I found first,




...

> I'm not sure what you're saying here.

I was pointing out that attribution (to a person by name, not to a
work by title) was important enough that print sources distinguished
the way they presented the name from the way they presented the
content.


>> >> On October 31, 2006, Michael Fortin suggested the following pattern:
>> >> Me: Can I say something?

>> ...
>> >> Aside from the current definition of , I think this would be a
>> >> good use of the element, ...

>> > I don't understand why we need an element here at all, and I don't
>> > understand why we would want to reuse , of all elements, if we did
>> > in fact need one.

>> That "Me:" isn't pronounced; it is metadata so important that it gets
>> written (in an odd style) in printed form.

> I don't buy that at all. It's just one way that people write dialogs, but
> as far as I can tell this is perfectly adequate:

>   Me: Can I say something?

> ...and you need neither  nor .

You *never* need q -- you could just use quotation marks.  And you
*never* need  -- you could just use the entity for a bullet.  But
being explicit is often judged worthwhile.

>> The punctuation (followed by a new sentence, complete with initial
>> capitals) is the closest a typewriter can come to markup, and scripts
>> will typically make the difference more emphatic.

> If it's _important_, then use . If it's just a keyword, then 
> is fine. If you're saying that the name is something that is in a
> different voice, then either the name or the text could be in .

Typically, the name would be entirely silent; in a proper audio
rendition, it would be inferred from the change in voice.  Alas, those
of us reading (as opposed to hearing) the dialogue need some hints.  A
cite (or a hypothetical ) element is the right semantic hook
from which to hang this styling.

> If you need even more fine-grained styling,  with class="" seems
> fine here.

A convention of  would work, though
people would (correctly) tend to see it as a compound class rather
than two unrelated class values.

But if attribution requires hoops like that, th

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Hugh Guiney]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:51 PM, David Workman  wrote:
> I agree that href would be better than src due to the reasons you gave.
>
> However, rather than adding a new attribute of alias, could  instead
> be given a name attribute that works similar to radio button names in forms
> to group them together? So you would have:
>
> Peter
> Meredith
> Peter
>
> and the two citations of Peter are linked together by a common name and in
> the spec, all  elements with the same name in a document should have
> the same content and be referring to the same citable source.

That sounds reasonable.

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Hugh Guiney]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 6:33 PM, David Workman  wrote:
> I don't know about others, but that just looks ugly to me (the repetition of
> 'cite' looks unnecessary). I know elegance isn't crucial, but given the
> choice between  and  I'd go for the former.
>
> As a possibility though,  could have a 'for' attribute in the same
> manner as a label and also support a 'src' attribute to link the element to
> the original source, giving:
> 
> What browsers do with the src attribute can be decided later, but it could
> easily be used as a more semantically meaningful  tag where appropriate.
Well, I don't exactly mind the repetition of "cite", though @for is
probably better as it's an existing attribute and already serves the
same purpose.

@src, however, should really only be used for replaced content. It
does not mean "source" in the sense of attribution, but in the sense
of derivation. I like the idea but I'd go for @href instead, e.g.:

As http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/abrahamlincoln/";>Abraham
Lincoln said, Four score and seven years ago
...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800080/";>The Incredible
Hulk (2008) is a reboot of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286716/";>Hulk (2003).

@href creates an explicit link to the work or author being cited
(whereas  creates an arbitrary one). Whether this is displayed as a
traditional hyperlink or merely as a "more info" context menu, etc.
should be up to the UA. If it is rendered as a link though,
surrounding links should probably take precedence, i.e.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln";>http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/abrahamlincoln/";>Abraham
Lincoln

...would point to Wikipedia, and not the White House.

I'm not exactly sure that @for belongs on  though, as the
relationship of author-to-quote is more often one-to-many than
one-to-one. It would be cumbersome and redundant for document authors
to have to specify the name every time in full just to create an
explicit association between the two. For instance, in a list of
famous quotes by Abraham Lincoln:



Four score and seven years ago ... --http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/abrahamlincoln/";>Abraham
Lincoln


Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to
speak out and remove all doubt. --Abraham
Lincoln



is not as efficient as:

List of Quotes by Abraham Lincoln


Four score and seven years ago ...


Better to remain silent and be thought
a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.



Dialogs would also benefit from this, as in:

Pete: I'm joining a gang.
Meredith: You can't!
Pete: Don't try to stop me.

Of course the downside to that is being unable to create a
relationship between all of a speaker's quotes and attributions
without inventing superfluous @ids. For that I propose an "alias"
attribute for  which allows it to represent another instance of
that same attribution:

Pete: I'm joining a gang.
Meredith: You can't!
Pete: You can't stop me.

which would also be useful in the informal abbreviation of titles of works:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443453/";>Borat: Cultural Learnings
of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
(2006)
My Review
Borat is a hilarious film about...

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[David Workman]

2009/10/6 Hugh Guiney 

> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Erik Vorhes  wrote:
> > I suppose  allows for more functionality in current UAs, but this
> > is an interesting proposition, especially if there were a way to
> > crosslink  used in this way to the original source (or whatever
> > it would point to). Would it be something along the lines of  > for="aside-id">, or did you have something else in mind?
>
> How about , as it would have been in XHTML 2?
>

I don't know about others, but that just looks ugly to me (the repetition of
'cite' looks unnecessary). I know elegance isn't crucial, but given the
choice between  and  I'd go for the former.

As a possibility though,  could have a 'for' attribute in the same
manner as a label and also support a 'src' attribute to link the element to
the original source, giving:

What browsers do with the src attribute can be decided later, but it could
easily be used as a more semantically meaningful  tag where appropriate.

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Hugh Guiney]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Erik Vorhes  wrote:
> I suppose  allows for more functionality in current UAs, but this
> is an interesting proposition, especially if there were a way to
> crosslink  used in this way to the original source (or whatever
> it would point to). Would it be something along the lines of  for="aside-id">, or did you have something else in mind?

How about , as it would have been in XHTML 2?

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 3:31 PM, tjeddo  wrote:
>
> Erik, Just so you are aware in the future, reductio ad absurdum (aka
> proof by contradiction)
> is a legitimate technique used in mathematics and logic to deductively
> prove statements.
> I'm not sure your usage of that phrase is correct or common--that is,
> to simply call someones argument
> absurd.  If you realize that someones argument is absurd it means you
> have identified at least
> one invalid statement in the argument.


Apologies for the error; in both instances I meant to use "slippery slope."

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[tjeddo]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Erik Vorhes  wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, Jim Jewett wrote:
>>> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>>> > On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>>> >> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:

> I don't know how
> otherwise to respond to such laughably obvious "reductio ad absurdum"
> arguments.

Erik, Just so you are aware in the future, reductio ad absurdum (aka
proof by contradiction)
is a legitimate technique used in mathematics and logic to deductively
prove statements.
I'm not sure your usage of that phrase is correct or common--that is,
to simply call someones argument
absurd.  If you realize that someones argument is absurd it means you
have identified at least
one invalid statement in the argument. If you desired you could even
prove them wrong by
constructing a proper reductio ad absurdem argument.

> 2. If you want to play the "reductio ad absurdum" game, I propose we
> eliminate  from the specification, because some stupid
> content author might try to create a document with the following
> markup:
>
> The rain in Spain falls mainly on
> the plain.

Again. If you appropriately "play the reductio ad absurdum game," then
that would be a good thing. You
would be proving the other person's argument wrong.

I'm sure I'm wasting other peoples time too iif they've read this far;
but there is probably a more productive
way to discuss HTML5 topics than using insults.
HTML5 topics without

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Gordon P. Hemsley]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Erik Vorhes  wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Gordon P. Hemsley  wrote:
>> I also propose allowing parenthetical citations and footnote markers
>> (as is used in the various W3C/WHATWG specifications) to also be
>> marked up with , though I'm not sure if TabAtkins agrees with me
>> on that point.
>
> I suppose  allows for more functionality in current UAs, but this
> is an interesting proposition, especially if there were a way to
> crosslink  used in this way to the original source (or whatever
> it would point to). Would it be something along the lines of  for="aside-id">, or did you have something else in mind?
>
> Erik

Hmm... I hadn't given much thought to the implementation of that, as I
was more worried about the other part of the debate, but I think
treating  as analogous to  in that situation is indeed a
good idea.

-- 
Gordon P. Hemsley
m...@gphemsley.org
http://gphemsley.org/ • http://gphemsley.org/blog/
http://sasha.sourceforge.net/ • http://www.yoursasha.com/

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Gordon P. Hemsley  wrote:
>
> I was discussing the  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  (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 . If an author
> should have the need to differentiate between the two, I propose that
> they use  and .
>
> Thus, I propose the following (which TabAtkins generally agrees with):
>
> Leave the default styling of  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  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 , though I'm not sure if TabAtkins agrees with me
> on that point.


I suppose  allows for more functionality in current UAs, but this
is an interesting proposition, especially if there were a way to
crosslink  used in this way to the original source (or whatever
it would point to). Would it be something along the lines of , or did you have something else in mind?



Erik

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Gordon P. Hemsley]

(I'm ignoring all of the unproductive back-and-forth that has occurred
thus far. This is meant to start the discussion off fresh.)

I was discussing the  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  (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 . If an author
should have the need to differentiate between the two, I propose that
they use  and .

Thus, I propose the following (which TabAtkins generally agrees with):

Leave the default styling of  to be italicized for legacy
implementations and allow any reference to any work or author, with
the granularity decided by the individual web developer.

I also propose allowing parenthetical citations and footnote markers
(as is used in the various W3C/WHATWG specifications) to also be
marked up with , though I'm not sure if TabAtkins agrees with me
on that point.

I hope this message can help bring the discussion back to a neutral
zone that will lead to an amicable resolution of this long debate.

Regards,
Gordon

--
Gordon P. Hemsley
m...@gphemsley.org
http://gphemsley.org/ • http://gphemsley.org/blog/
http://sasha.sourceforge.net/ • http://www.yoursasha.com/

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, Jim Jewett wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> > On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>> >> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> >> >> Unless there is some semantic value to the name being more than
>> >> >> "just" a name, yes.
>> >> > Is there?
>> >> Yes
>> > What is it?
>>
>>  points to a primary source of the statement, as opposed to an
>> someone merely named by the statement.
>
> I hate to be so repetitive, but why is that beneficial? What is the
> semantic value of this?
>
> Is there as much semantic value in pointing to the primary source of a
> statement as there is in knowing that the word "earth" refers to the
> planet and not the dirt, for example? If so, what is that extra value?

Identifying speakers and other sources of attribution have multiple
use-cases, as identified previously to this list. Such uses are often
extra-contextual, unlike your example of "earth." I don't know how
otherwise to respond to such laughably obvious "reductio ad absurdum"
arguments.


>> >> and with the removal of the  element (of which I was unaware
>> >> when I sent my last message) makes a compelling case for the
>> >> re-expansion of  for dialog.
>> >
>> > Why?
>>
>> dialogues and transcripts and credits and theatrical scripts are all
>> arguably too fine-grained for a "citation", as opposed to a "label" or
>> "attribution", but they are certainly real use cases where the
>> attribution is important.
>
> Why? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm trying to get to the use case
> that means that there is an actual benefit to what you are asking for.
> Just saying that it's important doesn't say _why_ it is important. I'm not
> denying that it is important, I'm just trying to work out _why_, so that
> the proposal (e.g. to use  for this) can be properly evaluated.
>
> What does  do that you want?


It may not need to be , per se, but that is the element that has
been used in examples of multiple kinds of quote + attribution markup
patterns. And since the WG has a general aversion to creating new
elements (except when it doesn't), using  makes the most sense.

To me, recommending  or  or  for such contexts is a
nonstarter, as these all appear to be designated for marking up text
"without conveying any extra importance." The desire is to have
speakers' names and other sources of attribution marked up in such a
way that sets them apart from the surrounding context. Especially in
the cases of dialog and transcription, their being "special" is
important. For example, listen to any of Nina Totenberg's reports on
US Supreme Court proceedings, or read just about any printed play text
in existence.

Above other sources of attribution, it is important for speakers'
names to be marked up as distinct from its surrounding context.
Moreover, this markup is not something that can be properly conveyed
by any element whose primary function is presentation- or
typographic-only.



> I don't buy that at all. It's just one way that people write dialogs, but
> as far as I can tell this is perfectly adequate:
>
>   Me: Can I say something?
>
> ...and you need neither  nor . I really feel that you are trying
> too hard to solve a problem that really doesn't exist here.


Surely you jest.

Have you ever read a play? In every instance I have run across,
speakers and their words are clearly demarcated (not to mention stage
directions, etc.


> I've started asking people what they think the errors are in the following
> snippet:
>
>  
>   Welcome to my home page
>   My name is Bob Smith.
>   I like the book Pandora's Star.
>   What do you think?
>   
>    James Smith
>    I'm with you Bob!
>   
>   
>    Fred
>    James wrote:
>    I'm with you Bob!
>    But I disagree, I think Pat's blog post is better.
>   
>  
>
> ...but frankly I'm having trouble working out which you are proposing to
> have valid and not, which is not a good sign.
>
> Given that I don't see the use case of marking up any of the s in
> the above except the book title (which would be styled differently), I
> really don't see the point of having this level of complexity.


Your example hardly dignifies a response, but here goes:

1. The proposal, as far as I can tell, is to allow  (or some
nonexistent element whose name would likely be less logical) to mark
up text for attribution, which often would be a name. I don't believe
*anyone* is arguing that every name should be marked up with .
Who are you trying to argue against here? You're not arguing against
those of us advocating for additional allowable uses for .

2. If you want to play the "reductio ad absurdum" game, I propose we
eliminate  from the specification, because some stupid
content author might try to create a document with the following
markup:

The rain in Spain falls mainly on
the plain.



>> > It seems like it would be better to not have any elements for the
>> > bottom three defi

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[tjeddo]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, Jim Jewett wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> > On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>> >> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> >> >> Unless there is some semantic value to the name being more than

>> >> and with the removal of the  element (of which I was unaware
>> >> when I sent my last message) makes a compelling case for the
>> >> re-expansion of  for dialog.

I disagree with the above statement. I believe that the current HTML5 spec is
heading in the right direction by narrowing the meaning of the cite element
compared to its ambiguous use in HTML documents in the past. Overloading
the meaning of the cite element further by using it to distinguish
speaker's names
would not only add ambiguity but would require developer's (who want to honor
typographical convention) to undo the default italics styling that
would be applied to
the speaker's name when enclosed by  tags.


>> That almost sounds as though the real specification were:
>>
>>    "Book Title, even if you aren't quoting or
>>     paraphrasing anything -- this isn't really about
>>     citations; we just call it cite for historical reasons."
>
> That's exactly what HTML5 says, yes.

I feel it is an improvement to HTML that the cite element is being focused to
specify the "title of a work." It is however unfortunate that the element's name
is 'cite' for legacy HTML reasons. I would much prefer the name of the
cite element
be reserved for a purpose equivalent to the use of \cite{} in LaTeX.

However, given the ambiguity of the HTML4 specification as to the correct usage
of the 'cite' element, I'm wondering if we shouldn't align the 'cite'
element with a more
intuitive use case matching that of satisfied by \cite{} in LaTeX. And
introduce a new inline
element called 'tow' (title of work) or 'tor' (title of reference),
for example, to explicitly
specify the "title of a work."

For example,

 I enjoyed reading East of Eden.

instead of

 I enjoyed reading East of Eden.

In fact, the two examples given in the HTML4 spec for using  are
both incorrect
according to the current HTML5 definition:

 - "As Harry S. Truman said,"
 - More information can be found in [ISO-]."

Note, the second example is being used to cite a source with a
displayed bibliography
entry key of ISO-, which is not the title of the work; rather an
identifier for the work.

So using cite in the LaTeX sense, you may have HTML5 markup that looks like:

A proof of Theorem 2.4 is provided in Survey of Foo Theory.
or
   Given that the existence of foo we infer bar http://example-math.org/bibliography#ABC";>[ABC, p.
47--48].

Admittedly, besides the improved legibility of the proposed cases, I'm
sure the more general  tag is just as sufficient.


> Ships get . Search for "ship name" in the spec (it's mentioned twice).

By the way, what is the reasoning in the HTML5 spec for stating that
ship names should not be
marked up with  but should use  instead?

I guess I'm saying, why are ship's not considered "works?"

Merriam-Webster's definition:
"7 a : something produced or accomplished by effort, exertion, or
exercise of skill  b : something
produced by the exercise of creative talent or expenditure of creative
effort : artistic production "

I would say a ship fits this definition and is certainly on par with
other large engineering/sculpture works such as the Statue of
Liberty--which is the title of a "work."

Here are three references that indicate specifically that Ship names
receive the same typographic treatment as other titles of works.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/italics.htm
http://grammartips.homestead.com/titles.html
http://englishplus.com/grammar/0113.htm

Let me know if I'm missing something as to why ship names should not
be surrounded by  tags.

Regards,
Tim Eddo

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 22 Sep 2009, Jim Jewett wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> > On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> >> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> >> >> Unless there is some semantic value to the name being more than 
> >> >> "just" a name, yes.
> >> > Is there?
> >> Yes
> > What is it?
> 
>  points to a primary source of the statement, as opposed to an 
> someone merely named by the statement.

I hate to be so repetitive, but why is that beneficial? What is the 
semantic value of this?

Is there as much semantic value in pointing to the primary source of a 
statement as there is in knowing that the word "earth" refers to the 
planet and not the dirt, for example? If so, what is that extra value?


> >> and with the removal of the  element (of which I was unaware 
> >> when I sent my last message) makes a compelling case for the 
> >> re-expansion of  for dialog.
> > 
> > Why?
> 
> dialogues and transcripts and credits and theatrical scripts are all 
> arguably too fine-grained for a "citation", as opposed to a "label" or 
> "attribution", but they are certainly real use cases where the 
> attribution is important.

Why? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm trying to get to the use case 
that means that there is an actual benefit to what you are asking for. 
Just saying that it's important doesn't say _why_ it is important. I'm not 
denying that it is important, I'm just trying to work out _why_, so that 
the proposal (e.g. to use  for this) can be properly evaluated.

What does  do that you want?


> These three are even cases where print sources will typically shift
> font in some way between the attribution (Mephistopheles) and
> the actual statement, though not always in the same manner.  Of the
> three that I found first,
> 
> NAME IN ALL CAPS
>   Indented lines, said
>   or sung aloud.
> 
> 
> Name.  Statement begins here.
> 
> 
> BY MS LASTNAME:
> Q.Attorney's question.
> A.Witness answers.
> Q.Attorney's next question.
> A.Next response.

I'm not sure what you're saying here.
 

> >> On October 31, 2006, Michael Fortin suggested the following pattern:
> >> Me: Can I say something?
> 
> >> Which Jeremy Keith also recommends. [1]
> ...
> >> Aside from the current definition of , I think this would be a
> >> good use of the element, since it makes more sense than  or 
> >> (what do those signify in this context?) and there's nothing wrong with
> >> an italicized name in this context. Moreover, there are examples of
> >> Fortin/Keith's usage in the wild.
> 
> > I don't understand why we need an element here at all, and I don't
> > understand why we would want to reuse , of all elements, if we did
> > in fact need one.
> 
> That "Me:" isn't pronounced; it is metadata so important that it gets 
> written (in an odd style) in printed form.

I don't buy that at all. It's just one way that people write dialogs, but 
as far as I can tell this is perfectly adequate:

   Me: Can I say something?

...and you need neither  nor . I really feel that you are trying 
too hard to solve a problem that really doesn't exist here.


> The punctuation (followed by a new sentence, complete with initial 
> capitals) is the closest a typewriter can come to markup, and scripts 
> will typically make the difference more emphatic.

If it's _important_, then use . If it's just a keyword, then  
is fine. If you're saying that the name is something that is in a 
different voice, then either the name or the text could be in .

If you need even more fine-grained styling,  with class="" seems 
fine here.

I don't really see the need for more than that though. It's not like there 
is a style so common that a new element would be useful.


> I'll agree that it seems odd to have that many  elements in such 
> close proximity, but it is the closest match I can find in the spec, and 
> it doesn't seem to be actually wrong.  Searching for lines by a 
> particular character is a fairly common use case.

Doesn't "find in page" handle that fine?


> >> > ...  How do you define "citation"? What problem does it solve?
> >>   should be allowed for markup in the following instances:
> >> - titles of works - full citations - names and other sources of quote 
> >> attribution (including identifying speakers in dialog) - names of 
> >> blog post commenters and authors (in the context of their comments, 
> >> posts, etc.)
> > That seems like a really strange and eclectic variety of uses.
> 
> All boil down to "says who?".  A title of a work indicates something 
> about when they said it, and how (formally enough to have a title), but 
> ... so does a hyperlink to the author.

"title of work" doesn't boil down "says who":

   My favourite book is Pandora's Star.

...so if that is bundled with the others, I stand by my statement that 
this is a really strange and eclectic variety of uses.


> > For example, it seems odd to say that in the following, the third 
> > is non-conforming, b

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Jim Jewett]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> >> Unless there is some semantic value to the name being more than
>> >> "just" a name, yes.
>> > Is there?
>> Yes
> What is it?

 points to a primary source of the statement, as opposed to an
someone merely named by the statement.

>> and with the removal of the  element (of which I was unaware
>> when I sent my last message) makes a compelling case for the
>> re-expansion of  for dialog.

> Why?

dialogues and transcripts and credits and theatrical scripts are all
arguably too fine-grained for a "citation", as opposed to a "label" or
"attribution", but they are certainly real use cases where the
attribution is important.

These three are even cases where print sources will typically shift
font in some way between the attribution (Mephistopheles) and
the actual statement, though not always in the same manner.  Of the
three that I found first,

NAME IN ALL CAPS
  Indented lines, said
  or sung aloud.


Name.  Statement begins here.


BY MS LASTNAME:
Q.Attorney's question.
A.Witness answers.
Q.Attorney's next question.
A.Next response.




>> On October 31, 2006, Michael Fortin suggested the following pattern:
>> Me: Can I say something?

>> Which Jeremy Keith also recommends. [1]
...
>> Aside from the current definition of , I think this would be a
>> good use of the element, since it makes more sense than  or 
>> (what do those signify in this context?) and there's nothing wrong with
>> an italicized name in this context. Moreover, there are examples of
>> Fortin/Keith's usage in the wild.

> I don't understand why we need an element here at all, and I don't
> understand why we would want to reuse , of all elements, if we did
> in fact need one.

That "Me:" isn't pronounced; it is metadata so important that it gets
written (in an odd style) in printed form.  The punctuation (followed
by a new sentence, complete with initial capitals) is the closest a
typewriter can come to markup, and scripts will typically make the
difference more emphatic.

I'll agree that it seems odd to have that many  elements in such
close proximity, but it is the closest match I can find in the spec,
and it doesn't seem to be actually wrong.  Searching for lines by a
particular character is a fairly common use case.

>> > ...  How do
>> > you define "citation"? What problem does it solve?

>>   should be allowed for markup in the following instances:

>> - titles of works
>> - full citations
>> - names and other sources of quote attribution (including identifying
>> speakers in dialog)
>> - names of blog post commenters and authors (in the context of their
>> comments, posts, etc.)

> That seems like a really strange and eclectic variety of uses.

All boil down to "says who?".  A title of a work indicates something
about when they said it, and how (formally enough to have a title),
but ... so does a hyperlink to the author.

> For example, it seems odd to say that in the following, the third 
> is non-conforming, but the other two are fine:
>
>   
>    Comment by John Adams
>    I think that the following comment by Fred Fox is
>    right:
>    
>     Tomatoes are juicy.
>    
>    However, I like to visit Ian and he does not like them
>    at all.
>   

Please do some hallway testing on this.  Ask half a dozen people what
they think of this markup.  If you have to prompt, ask about the use
of cite in particular.

I'm guessing that most won't even really notice the cites to John
Adams or Fred Fox, but almost all will wonder about the cite to Ian.

The difference is that John Adams and Fred Fox were the ones saying
something -- the cite was attributing something to them.  They were
"actors" as opposed to "objects" in the linguistic sense.  Ian was
simply an "object" (a direct object, in this case) that happens to be
human.


> It seems like it would be better to not have any elements for the
> bottom three definitions you list, or to introduce a new element for those
> that have use cases. However, no compelling use cases have been mentioned
> as far as I am aware.

Are you seriously saying that there is no need to attribute to "names
and other sources of quote attribution (including identifying speakers
in dialog)", or to markup the user name of "names of blog post
commenters and authors (in the context of their
comments, posts, etc.)"

???

I haven't yet seen a forum that didn't style usernames of the
commentators differently (generally either bold or as a link, rather
than italics, but still differently).

Nor have I yet seen a script (or published play) that didn't use some
styling variation to distinguish the character names from their words.
 (Usually -- but not quite always -- I see additional variations to
indicate character actions, and generic stage directions such as scene
endings.)

> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>> I feel here that you're str

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> >> Unless there is some semantic value to the name being more than 
> >> "just" a name, yes.
> >
> > Is there?
> 
> Yes

What is it?


> and with the removal of the  element (of which I was unaware 
> when I sent my last message) makes a compelling case for the 
> re-expansion of  for dialog.

Why?


> On October 31, 2006, Michael Fortin suggested the following pattern: 
> Me: Can I say something?
> 
> Which Jeremy Keith also recommends. [1]
> 
> (For longer text it would make more sense to do something like 
> , but that's beside the point.)
> 
> You didn't explicitly object to such a pattern (though implemented a 
> different one for ) as late as May 5, 2008 [2].

You don't think "this is all moot" is explicit enough? :-)


> Aside from the current definition of , I think this would be a 
> good use of the element, since it makes more sense than  or  
> (what do those signify in this context?) and there's nothing wrong with 
> an italicized name in this context. Moreover, there are examples of 
> Fortin/Keith's usage in the wild.

I don't understand why we need an element here at all, and I don't 
understand why we would want to reuse , of all elements, if we did 
in fact need one.


> > ... I don't understand what your proposal is, at this point. How do 
> > you define "citation"? What problem does it solve?
> 
> I should have made this clearer, I suppose, sorry. What I propose is 
> that  should be allowed for markup in the following instances:
> 
> - titles of works
> - full citations
> - names and other sources of quote attribution (including identifying
> speakers in dialog)
> - names of blog post commenters and authors (in the context of their
> comments, posts, etc.)

That seems like a really strange and eclectic variety of uses. It seems 
like authors are better served with more focused elements or with 
elements where there's no seeming gaps in what the element can be used. 
For example, it seems odd to say that in the following, the third  
is non-conforming, but the other two are fine:

   
Comment by John Adams
I think that the following comment by Fred Fox is 
right:

 Tomatoes are juicy.

However, I like to visit Ian and he does not like them 
at all.
   

It seems like it would be better to not have any elements for the 
bottom three definitions you list, or to introduce a new element for those 
that have use cases. However, no compelling use cases have been mentioned 
as far as I am aware.


On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>
> A use-case for "person's name" in the context of :
> 
> In reference to many Classical texts one will often refer to the author 
> in lieu of the title (or in some cases that author's corpus). E.g.:
> 
> You should read Herodotus.

That's a fine use of , though, because there "Herodotus" is being 
used as the name of a work (albeit not the name printed on the cover).


On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>
> I never suggested otherwise. I want to be able to mark up names, etc., 
> not just titles of works, with  when the context is appropriate. 
> That is, I want to mark up these things when they function as an 
> attribution. (As I have previously detailed.)

I'm still having trouble with the "why". Could you elaborate on why you 
need to mark these up explicitly?


> I feel here that you're stretching the definition of "title of work"
> beyond its usefulness. If we can use aliases within , great, but
> that seems to make more apparent the usefulness of having  be
> for more than just "title of work."

There's two uses that I know of: making titles of works italics by 
default, and making it easier to change that style. In:

   You should read Herodotus.


On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Jim Jewett wrote:
> Ian wrote:
> > Eric wrote:
> >> Put another way, if you had no prior knowledge of the current HTML5 
> >> definition of  (and perhaps any other specification's 
> >> definition of the element), what would seem to be logical and 
> >> appropriate uses of the element?
> >
> > You mean based on just the element name? I wouldn't use it without 
> > reading the spec first. Most people seem to think it means "italics", 
> > though, for what that's worth.
> 
> I think that gets at the root of the problem with cite.  Most people 
> don't read the spec, or even know where to find it.  cite isn't common 
> enough to just copy by example, and it turns out to be ambiguous as the 
> name of an element or attribute.

Agreed. Not sure what to do about that, though; removing the whole element 
seems a little brutal since it is used and isn't causing that much harm.


> Do you wrap the actual excerpt (the precise thing you're citing), or the 
> name of the source?  If you wrap the name/title of the source, is there 
> a way to show the scope of what you're attributing?
> 
> The HTML 4 definition ("CITE: Contains a citation or a reference to 
> other s

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 4:09 AM, Smylers  wrote:
> Erik Vorhes writes:
>
>> A use-case for "person's name" in the context of :
>>
>> In reference to many Classical texts one will often refer to the
>> author in lieu of the title (or in some cases that author's corpus).
>
> That isn't an argument for people's names _in general_ being marked up;
> it's an argument for marking them up in the specific case where they are
> used as (nicknames of) titles of works.


I never suggested otherwise. I want to be able to mark up names, etc.,
not just titles of works, with  when the context is appropriate.
That is, I want to mark up these things when they function as an
attribution. (As I have previously detailed.)


>
>> E.g.:
>>
>> You should read Herodotus.
>
> That's using "Herodotus" as the title of a work.  In many fields it's
> common to refer to well-known works by nicknames, such as 'Smith &
> Thomas', 'The Dragon Book', 'The Red Book', or 'The White Album'.  So
>  should be used for them.


I feel here that you're stretching the definition of "title of work"
beyond its usefulness. If we can use aliases within , great, but
that seems to make more apparent the usefulness of having  be
for more than just "title of work." Indeed, titles of works and these
other examples more readily fall under the rubric of "something for
attribution." (I'm working on more specific wording but wanted to get
this out there.)


> But it doesn't follow that  should be used for any other
> occurrences of those terms -- the people Smith and Thomas, or a book
> which just happens to be red.

Really? ;)


Erik

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Smylers]

Erik Vorhes writes:

> A use-case for "person's name" in the context of :
> 
> In reference to many Classical texts one will often refer to the
> author in lieu of the title (or in some cases that author's corpus).

That isn't an argument for people's names _in general_ being marked up;
it's an argument for marking them up in the specific case where they are
used as (nicknames of) titles of works.

> E.g.:
> 
> You should read Herodotus.

That's using "Herodotus" as the title of a work.  In many fields it's
common to refer to well-known works by nicknames, such as 'Smith &
Thomas', 'The Dragon Book', 'The Red Book', or 'The White Album'.  So
 should be used for them.

But it doesn't follow that  should be used for any other
occurrences of those terms -- the people Smith and Thomas, or a book
which just happens to be red.

Smylers

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Smylers]

Jim Jewett writes:

> In
> http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-September/023005.html,
> Ian quoted Erik Vorhes as writing:
> 
> > > Put another way, if you had no prior knowledge of the current
> > > HTML5 definition of  (and perhaps any other specification's
> > > definition of the element), what would seem to be logical and
> > > appropriate uses of the element?
> 
> Ian:
> > You mean based on just the element name? I wouldn't use it without
> > reading the spec first. Most people seem to think it means
> > "italics", though, for what that's worth.
> 
> I think that gets at the root of the problem with cite.  Most people
> don't read the spec, or even know where to find it.  cite isn't common
> enough to just copy by example, and it turns out to be ambiguous as
> the name of an element or attribute.

But why would somebody be in the situation where they encounter ,
want to use it, but aren't sure where?

Surely that's backwards?  Why would authors be trying to use elements
for the sake of them?

I'd expect the more usual sequence to be an author typing some text,
blissfully unaware of , then coming to the title of a book and
wanting it to be styled differently so as to convey that to users, and
looking for the element to use.

I don't think anybody's claiming that "cite" is a great name.  But it's
what we have.

> Do you wrap the actual excerpt (the precise thing you're citing), or
> the name of the source?

The name of the work is the part that readers typically have
distinguished to them.

> If you wrap the name/title of the source, is there a way to show the
> scope of what you're attributing?

Not in HTML5 (but possibly with a microformat specifically for that).
In what way do you envisage this being conveyed to or of use to users?

> My own interpretation of (a fraction of)
> http://philip.html5.org/data/cite.txt did not support narrowing the
> definition only to titles.

But in the cases where  is being used for things other than titles
of works, what does it achieve?  How do users benefit?

If authors are spending time on using an element which has no effect on
users (and Hixie's pointed out that in many cases where  is used
other than for titles of works authors use CSS to remove the default
italics, to ensure that users don't actually have the presence of the
 conveyed to them) then there's no reason for HTML5 to continue to
support it.

Rather it does authors a favour; they'll no longer have to spend time
doing something of no benefit.

> These do seem useful; if you wanted more information, it might well be
> "How do I contact this photographer or that model to get something
> similar?"

How does the use of  make that any easier for users than if, say,
 (or  or  or whatever) had been used instead?

Smylers

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

A use-case for "person's name" in the context of :

In reference to many Classical texts one will often refer to the
author in lieu of the title (or in some cases that author's corpus).
E.g.:

You should read Herodotus.



Erik

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

A few points of clarification:

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> Unless there is some semantic value to the name being more than "just" a
>> name, yes.
>
> Is there?

Yes, and with the removal of the  element (of which I was
unaware when I sent my last message) makes a compelling case for the
re-expansion of  for dialog.

On October 31, 2006, Michael Fortin suggested the following pattern:
Me: Can I say something?

Which Jeremy Keith also recommends. [1]

(For longer text it would make more sense to do something like
, but that's beside the point.)

You didn't explicitly object to such a pattern (though implemented a
different one for ) as late as May 5, 2008 [2].

Aside from the current definition of , I think this would be a
good use of the element, since it makes more sense than  or 
(what do those signify in this context?) and there's nothing wrong
with an italicized name in this context. Moreover, there are examples
of Fortin/Keith's usage in the wild.


> There's nothing wrong with overriding default presentaional styles, but
> there _is_ something wrong with a spec's defaults being different than
> what authors want.

Agreed.


>> How many sites using  for people's names (or other reasonable uses
>> that deviate from "title of work") would it take to convince you that it
>> _was_ a common case?
>
> Benjamin already asked me that, I was turning the tables on him when I
> asked the question above. :-)

Oops! I like to think of myself as a better reader than that. Sorry! :)


> I had answered:
>
>> > A random sample of the Web would need to show more uses of this than
>> > uses of other things.

I'm not sure the lack of majority use should be an impediment, but
that's an issue of conclusions rather than reasoning. (And I
sympathize with needing to draw the line at some point, even if it
makes some of us unhappy or some of us feel it's incorrect.)



> ... I don't understand what your proposal is, at this
> point. How do you define "citation"? What problem does it solve?

I should have made this clearer, I suppose, sorry. What I propose is
that  should be allowed for markup in the following instances:

- titles of works
- full citations
- names and other sources of quote attribution (including identifying
speakers in dialog)
- names of blog post commenters and authors (in the context of their
comments, posts, etc.)


> It doesn't matter how many people say something on this mailing list,
> that's not an unbiased sample. (The people who think  is fine as
> defined in HTML5 don't have motivation to say so, for example.)

I agree that basing decisions exclusively on what is said on the
mailing list is not always the right approach. The length of this
thread (and filtering out your and my messages) suggests that the
representation of voices pro & con (re:  in HTML5) is pretty
close to equal. In other words, it's not just you and a bunch of
cranky folks objecting to the specification (as much as it may feel
that way sometimes).


Erik


[1] http://adactio.com/journal/1609/
[2] http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2008-May/014684.html

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009, Nils Dagsson Moskopp wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 16.09.2009, 09:16 + schrieb Ian Hickson:
> > Names aren't generally styled, certainly not in italics, so that isn't the 
> > problem solved.
> 
> Important names are sometimes styled through use of small-caps, though 
> it may be that this is an older / rare convention and not applicable 
> here.

The spec suggests the  element for this particular use case, and has an 
example of this. Search for the two occurrances of "gossip".

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Nils Dagsson Moskopp]

Am Mittwoch, den 16.09.2009, 09:16 + schrieb Ian Hickson:
> Names aren't generally styled, certainly not in italics, so that isn't the 
> problem solved.

Important names are sometimes styled through use of small-caps, though
it may be that this is an older / rare convention and not applicable
here.

-- 
Nils Dagsson Moskopp

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> >
> >> Earlier, when justifying why you changed the definition of  
> >> from HTML 4.01, you said:
> >>
> >> > I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer to 
> >> > people, because typographically people aren't generally marked up 
> >> > anyway. I don't really see how you'd use it to refer to untitled 
> >> > works.
> >>
> >> This usage is an example of when people are typographically marked 
> >> up.
> >
> > It's a minor case. The semantic here wouldn't be "name of person", it 
> > would be "name of person when immediately following a quote in a 
> > pullquote", which is far too specific to deserve a whole element.
> 
> I don't think anyone is arguing that there should be a new element 
> exclusively for the above use or that  should be limited only to 
> that definition ("name of person when immediately following a quote in a 
> pullquote" or the more forgiving "person to whom the quote is 
> attributed"). Still, it would be nice to be able to use  to mark 
> up people being cited (along with other citations that don't explicitly 
> involve a work's title).

Why? What problem would such a solution solve?

Names aren't generally styled, certainly not in italics, so that isn't the 
problem solved.

 as a way to mark the source of a  or  only works if 
we limit  to only those cases, which you're not proposing, so it 
doesn't solve that problem either.

So what problem are you solving?


> > ... more importantly, the element's style is made non-italics, thus 
> > completely defeating the entire point of marking up the element in the 
> > first place.
> 
> I'm not sure this is a reasonable argument against the use of . 
> Following this line of reasoning, it is not worthwhile to mark up titles 
> of works if they are *not* to be italicized;

Yes, that is correct.


> moreover, it is even pointless to mark up headings using - if 
> you intend to remove the bold styling.

- have two related effects other than the styling: they allow the 
document structure (outline) to be exposed, e.g. when editing, and they 
allow significantly easier navigation of the document for users of 
accessibility tools.

Neither of these use cases apply to .

If people didn't commonly style headings, and if headings didn't by 
default have a different style, and if knowing what was a heading didn't 
help accessibility, then yeah, - would be pointless.


> The counter to this approach is that - provide semantic value 
> even when styled differently from the default. But the same can be said 
> for , whether it is defined as "title of work" or as a more 
> general "citation."

What value? Just marking up semantics does not have enough "value" to 
justify it. If it did, we'd be adding thousands of elements. Why not 
 for marking up colours,  for marking up prices, 
 for marking up mortgage rates,  for 
addresses,  for names of board games,  for the cost of 
sales tax in advertising...

What is special about marking up authors that doesn't apply to all the 
above? Or are you also asking for all the above?


> > When examining pages, you have to first pick a random sample, then 
> > study those, because otherwise you get sampling bias. With a trillion 
> > pages on the Web, it's easy to find thousands of examples of any 
> > particular use of HTML elements; the question is what is the most 
> > useful definition, not what is used at all.
> 
> Because you believe "title of work" to be the most useful definition, 
> does that mean that you would reject even a majority use of  for 
> marking up citations that aren't only or exclusively titles?

It's a judgement call. (FWIW, the data shows that  is rarely used 
for people's names, often used for titles of works, sometimes used for the 
entire citation (usually associated with going through hoops to avoid the 
default styling), and most often used just for its italics effect.)


> There are plenty of examples of authors using  to mark up the 
> following (among other things):
> 
> - titles of works
> - full citations
> - names and other sources of quote attribution (leaving aside
> placement relative to the quote)
> - names of blog post commenters and authors (in the context of their
> comments, posts, etc.)

Sure. There are even more examples of them using it just as synonym for 
the  element.


> Even if titles are by for the most common use case, it doesn't make 
> sense to exclude other semantically justifiable uses of what appear to 
> be valid uses of the  element, at least according to the English 
> language usages associated with the word "cite."

That's not the reasoning that was used though. The reasoning that was used 
is "people who aren't using this for italics are mostly using it for 
titles of works. Is that useful? Yes, titles of works are often italics, 
so this would help people. Would it be more helpful if we increased it to 
mark up people's names? No, because th

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Smylers]

Erik Vorhes writes:

> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> 
> > > Earlier, when justifying why you changed the definition of 
> > > from HTML 4.01, you said:
> > >
> > > > I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer
> > > > to people, because typographically people aren't generally
> > > > marked up anyway. I don't really see how you'd use it to refer
> > > > to untitled works.
> > >
> > > This usage is an example of when people are typographically marked
> > > up.
> > 
> > It's a minor case. The semantic here wouldn't be "name of person",
> > it would be "name of person when immediately following a quote in a
> > pullquote", which is far too specific to deserve a whole element.
> > 
> 
> I don't think anyone is arguing that there should be a new element
> exclusively for the above use or that  should be limited only to
> that definition ("name of person when immediately following a quote in
> a pullquote" or the more forgiving "person to whom the quote is
> attributed"). Still, it would be nice to be able to use  to mark
> up people being cited (along with other citations that don't
> explicitly involve a work's title).

But what do those situations have in common?  Titles of works are
rendered in some way which makes them stand out (typically italics), so
they aren't mistaken for words the authors is using with their normal
meaning.

That doesn't apply to blockquote attributions as a whole, where the
attribution is distinguished by dint of being the line just after the
quote.  And an attribution may include the author's name, the title of
the work, and a page number -- of which the title of the work needs
marking up in some way, ideally the same way as titles of works are
elsewhere in the document.

A publisher's house style may require that titles of works are
underlined instead of italicized, or in purple, or in roman text but
with single quotes around them ... but it's exceedingly unlikely they
would use exactly the same style for blockquote attributions.

Similarly a speaking browser would likely read titles of works
differently from the surrounding text, but doesn't need to give
blockquote attributions the same treatment.  The two are different.
They are conveyed differently to users.

I can appreciate that having to use:

  blockquote + div { text-align: right; }

(or whatever) isn't as nice as having a  element.
But if you agree a  is too niche to have its own
element, cramming it into an element which already has a specific
meaning and conveys something different to users.

Where a specific element for your needs doesn't exist the right course
of action is to use a generic one.

> > ... more importantly, the element's style is made non-italics, thus
> > completely defeating the entire point of marking up the element in
> > the first place.
> 
> I'm not sure this is a reasonable argument against the use of  .
> Following this line of reasoning, it is not worthwhile to mark up
> titles of works if they are *not* to be italicized;

It's only worthwhile marking up _anything_ if there's to be some benefit
to readers.  If you do not wish your users to get clues as to which
words are titles of works then indeed you should not mark them up at
all.

Indeed going further, if you do not wish text to be conveyed to users as
being the title of a work then you must not mark it up with .
Even if you use CSS to remove the italics, only users of graphical
browsers with CSS enabled and good vision will be aware of that; many
other users will still have the words in question italicized or
otherwise conveyed in the manner appropriate for titles of works.  It is
unfair on such minority users to rely on CSS for removing meaning from
elements.

(Note this isn't about whether it's italics or some other styling you've
chosen to convey which are titles of works to readers.  If you wish to
remove the italics and use something else instead,  is still the
right element.)

> moreover, it is even pointless to mark up headings using  - if
> you intend to remove the bold styling.

Not so long as you leave the larger font sizes, or replace it with some
other styling which conveys they are headings -- then all users will
have conveyed to them that the headings are in fact headings, regardless
of their browsing environment.

> The counter to this approach is that  - provide semantic value
> even when styled differently from the default.

Quite.

> But the same can be said for  , whether it is defined as "title
> of work" or as a more general "citation."

Nope, because those two need conveying differently to users, and the
semantics browsers convey by default are those appropriate for titles of
works.

> Even if titles are by for the most common use case, it doesn't make
> sense to exclude other semantically justifiable uses of what appear to
> be valid uses of the  element, at least according to the English
> language usages associated with the word "cite."

At this point in HTML's life many element

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

Dear Ian,

Here are a few more thoughts regarding the definition of  in HTML5.


On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>
>> Earlier, when justifying why you changed the definition of  from
>> HTML 4.01, you said:
>>
>> > I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer to
>> > people, because typographically people aren't generally marked up
>> > anyway. I don't really see how you'd use it to refer to untitled
>> > works.
>>
>> This usage is an example of when people are typographically marked up.
>
> It's a minor case. The semantic here wouldn't be "name of person", it
> would be "name of person when immediately following a quote in a
> pullquote", which is far too specific to deserve a whole element.
>

I don't think anyone is arguing that there should be a new element
exclusively for the above use or that  should be limited only to
that definition ("name of person when immediately following a quote in
a pullquote" or the more forgiving "person to whom the quote is
attributed"). Still, it would be nice to be able to use  to mark
up people being cited (along with other citations that don't
explicitly involve a work's title).



> ... more importantly, the element's style is made
> non-italics, thus completely defeating the entire point of marking up the
> element in the first place.

I'm not sure this is a reasonable argument against the use of .
Following this line of reasoning, it is not worthwhile to mark up
titles of works if they are *not* to be italicized; moreover, it is
even pointless to mark up headings using - if you intend to
remove the bold styling.

The counter to this approach is that - provide semantic value
even when styled differently from the default. But the same can be
said for , whether it is defined as "title of work" or as a more
general "citation."



> When examining pages, you have to first pick a random sample, then study
> those, because otherwise you get sampling bias. With a trillion pages on
> the Web, it's easy to find thousands of examples of any particular use of
> HTML elements; the question is what is the most useful definition, not
> what is used at all.

Because you believe "title of work" to be the most useful definition,
does that mean that you would reject even a majority use of  for
marking up citations that aren't only or exclusively titles?

There are plenty of examples of authors using  to mark up the
following (among other things):

- titles of works
- full citations
- names and other sources of quote attribution (leaving aside
placement relative to the quote)
- names of blog post commenters and authors (in the context of their
comments, posts, etc.)

Even if titles are by for the most common use case, it doesn't make
sense to exclude other semantically justifiable uses of what appear to
be valid uses of the  element, at least according to the English
language usages associated with the word "cite."

Put another way, if you had no prior knowledge of the current HTML5
definition of  (and perhaps any other specification's definition
of the element), what would seem to be logical and appropriate uses of
the element?


>> By changing the definition of  in HTML5, you are saying that numerous
>> users of the HTML4 definition of  are no longer conforming, and not
>> really giving any alternative that does the same job.
>
>  does the job fine, in the rare cases where someone really wants to
> mark up someone's name.

Unless there is some semantic value to the name being more than "just"
a name, yes.


>> In the absence of that, having  mean simply a source being cited,
>> and allowing the author to determine whether they want to use it for
>> titles of works, authors, or entire citations, seems to be both
>> reasonable and compatible with existing content.
>
> I think having it mean "title of work" only is more useful. Having it mean
> all three will mislead authors into using it for all three, and then cause
> them undue pain as they work around the default styling.

I'm not sure I buy the "undue pain" argument, especially since there
are plenty of times authors may wish to deviate from the default
italic style of  (using either "title of work" or "citation" as
the definition):

- A normally italicized title that is in a block of text that is also
italicized (in which case the general use would be to remove italics
from )
- A title of a work that according to a style guide should not be
italicized (in which case a class value would probably be added to the
 element, such as "The Freedom to
Offend").

Moreover, what kinds of difficulties do you suppose? Nested 
elements? I don't think this would be any more a challenge than nested
lists,  in bolded text, or  in italicized text, in terms
of dealing with default styles.


> People are actively overriding the styles  because they think it's
> the right element, but it has the wrong effect. I don't know what more
> harm we could be causing here. The element is failing at its only purpose,
> because

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Sun, 16 Aug 2009, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
> On 16/08/2009 12:21, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > Italics is the right format for almost all titles of works.
> 
> How are you measuring that?
> 
> For example, chapters in collections and articles are works and have 
> titles, and those titles aren't typically distinguished with italics, at 
> least in English.
> 
> "Titles of works are commonly distinguished from surrounding text" and
> "italics is a common format for many titles of works" would statements that
> would be hard to argue with.

The spec lists these cases:

# a book, a paper, an essay, a poem, a score, a song, a script, a film, a 
# TV show, a game, a sculpture, a painting, a theatre production, a play, an 
# opera, a musical, an exhibition, a legal case report, etc

Of those, all would be typically marked up in italics except maybe games 
and exhibitions.

I'm not saying it's _always_ right. Just that it's right often enough to 
be the default.


On Mon, 17 Aug 2009, Brian Campbell wrote:
> On Jul 19, 2009, at 5:58 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > Certainly there are situation-specific cases where names might be 
> > styled, but I think it's mostly as a side-effect of location rather 
> > than because the text is a name. Consider:
> > 
> > 
> >   Best value for the money!
> >   J. Random User
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >   Best value for the money!
> >   A Random Book
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >   Best value for the money!
> >   Newspaper
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >   [23:02] evaluator: best value
> >   filename.log
> > 
> 
> Hmm. Isn't the common theme here that those names are a source that is 
> being cited (either a work or person)? For many authors, when writing 
> stylesheets to apply to these types of uses, it makes more sense or is 
> easier to have a specific element to style, rather than simply a text 
> node that is a sibling of a  and/or a descendent of a particular 
> class of .

I think these cases would typically be styled in all kinds of ways that 
are going to require class attributes anyway, so the need for a  for 
the second part of these examples is a non-issue.



> Earlier, when justifying why you changed the definition of  from 
> HTML 4.01, you said:
> 
> > I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer to 
> > people, because typographically people aren't generally marked up 
> > anyway. I don't really see how you'd use it to refer to untitled 
> > works.
> 
> This usage is an example of when people are typographically marked up. 

It's a minor case. The semantic here wouldn't be "name of person", it 
would be "name of person when immediately following a quote in a 
pullquote", which is far too specific to deserve a whole element.


> And there are numerous examples of this use, which seem to contradict 
> this argument:
> 
> > HTML4 actually defined  more like what you describe above; we 
> > changed it to be a "title of work" element rather than a "citation" 
> > element because that's actually how people were using it.
>
> Among them (selected from some I have run across myself, as well as some 
> from Philip Taylor's data):
> 
> * http://www.webporter.com (from Philip Taylor's data)
>is used to mark up the source of a testimonial.

The markup in this case is all sorts of wrong -- e.g. the citation is 
inside the quote -- and, more importantly, the element's style is made 
non-italics, thus completely defeating the entire point of marking up the 
element in the first place.

This page is an argument to not have  cover people's names.


> * http://www.thesentencegame.com/ (from Philip Taylor's data)
>is used to mark up the user who wrote or drew a particular piece of
>   content.

Yup, this is one of the very few examples of marking up names with .


> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_interference (from Philip Taylor's data)
>is used to mark up a full bibliographic citation. Also used on other
>   pages on Wikipedia.

This is a good example of  being more useful if used only for 
titles, given that  is being un-styled then a  inside it is 
being restyled to italics. The HTML5 definition would have  only 
used for the italics part, thus making the styling simpler.


> * http://www.igofigure.com/page/testimonials/
>is used for the source of a testimonial.
>
> * 
> http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/running-with-the-bulls-in-pamplona/
>   (and other articles on the NY Times Blogs)
>is used to mark up the author of a comment.
> 
> * http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1
>   In the very example given in HTML 4.01,  is used to mark up the author
>   of a quote.
> 
> * http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/04/07/hhgregg-doa
>is used to mark up the author of a comment.
> 
> * 
> http://diggingintowordpress.com/ThemePlayground/index.php?wptheme=H5%20Theme%20Template
>   Even some folks who are trying to use HTML5 are using  to mark up the
>   author of a comment; take a look at the comments on one of the example
>   articles.
> 
> * http://microform

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Brian Campbell]

On Aug 16, 2009, at 7:21 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

On Mon, 3 Aug 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
It is often the most semantically appropriate element for marking  
up

a name


There is no need to mark up a name at all.


I don't understand.


What is the problem solved by marking up people's names?

Why is this:

  I live with Brett and Damian.

...better than this?:

  I live with Brett and Damian.


Has anyone claimed that the  element should be used in such a  
case? The only usage I've seen offered is that the  element may  
be used to mark up a persons name when that person is the source of a  
quotation; as in, when you are citing that person (hence, the term  
"cite"). In this case, you frequently do want to distinguish them from  
the quotation. It is especially common in block level quotations, such  
as a testimonial, an epigraph, or the like.



I don't think it makes sense to ignore the existing behaviour of
authors.


Existing behaviour of authors is not to mark up names with .


Except for the authors that do mark up names with 


There are some, but they are not the majority.


Should only the majority usage ever be allowed? Or if there is another  
usage, that is somewhat less common, but is still logically  
consistent, usefully takes advantage of fallback styling in the  
absence of CSS, and meets the English language definition of the term,  
should that also be allowed?


-- Brian

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Brian Campbell]

Oops. This has been sitting in my outbox for a while, so it's a  
response to somewhat old messages, but I think it still has some  
value, especially the examples taken from Philip Taylor's data and  
elsewhere on the web.


On Jul 19, 2009, at 5:58 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:

Certainly there are situation-specific cases where names might be  
styled,
but I think it's mostly as a side-effect of location rather than  
because

the text is a name. Consider:


  Best value for the money!
  J. Random User



  Best value for the money!
  A Random Book



  Best value for the money!
  Newspaper



  [23:02] evaluator: best value
  filename.log



Hmm. Isn't the common theme here that those names are a source that is  
being cited (either a work or person)? For many authors, when writing  
stylesheets to apply to these types of uses, it makes more sense or is  
easier to have a specific element to style, rather than simply a text  
node that is a sibling of a  and/or a descendent of a particular  
class of .


Earlier, when justifying why you changed the definition of  from  
HTML 4.01, you said:


I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer to  
people,
because typographically people aren't generally marked up anyway. I  
don't

really see how you'd use it to refer to untitled works.


This usage is an example of when people are typographically marked up.  
So this argument should not apply. It seems fairly common, when doing  
block-level quotations, to mark up the source of a quote, whether it  
is the name of the author or the title of a work, usually in italics  
(which is generally how browsers mark up a  element in the  
absence of CSS).


And there are numerous examples of this use, which seem to contradict  
this argument:



HTML4 actually defined  more like what you describe above; we
changed it to be a "title of work" element rather than a "citation"
element because that's actually how people were using it.



Among them (selected from some I have run across myself, as well as  
some from Philip Taylor's data):


* http://www.webporter.com (from Philip Taylor's data)
   is used to mark up the source of a testimonial.

* http://www.thesentencegame.com/ (from Philip Taylor's data)
   is used to mark up the user who wrote or drew a particular  
piece of content.


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_interference (from Philip Taylor's  
data)
   is used to mark up a full bibliographic citation. Also used  
on other pages on Wikipedia.


* http://www.igofigure.com/page/testimonials/
   is used for the source of a testimonial.

* 
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/running-with-the-bulls-in-pamplona/
  (and other articles on the NY Times Blogs)
   is used to mark up the author of a comment.

* http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1
  In the very example given in HTML 4.01,  is used to mark up  
the author of a quote.


* http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/04/07/hhgregg-doa
   is used to mark up the author of a comment.

* 
http://diggingintowordpress.com/ThemePlayground/index.php?wptheme=H5%20Theme%20Template
  Even some folks who are trying to use HTML5 are using  to  
mark up the author of a comment; take a look at the comments on one of  
the example articles.


* http://microformats.org/wiki/posh-patterns
  Another recommendation to use  to mark up a person who is the  
source of a quote (as well as to use  for a bibliographic  
citation).


By changing the definition of  in HTML5, you are saying that  
numerous users of the HTML4 definition of  are no longer  
conforming, and not really giving any alternative that does the same  
job. I suppose ideally we would have ,  and   
(among others) that could be nested in such a way as to express  
exactly what the author means. In the absence of that, having   
mean simply a source being cited, and allowing the author to determine  
whether they want to use it for titles of works, authors, or entire  
citations, seems to be both reasonable and compatible with existing  
content. If the author wishes to be more specific, they can use a  
class to specify which type of citation they are referring to (perhaps  
"citation", "author", "title"), or microdata, a microformat, or RDFa.  
For example:


Aristotle
The Meaning of Life
Mencken, H. L.  
Prejudices: A Selection class="publisher">Johns Hopkins University Press 2006time>


Generally, though, I don't think that the class would be necessary for  
these; you could instead simply select on the context of the citation:


- For marking up a person who is the source of a quotation:
  .testimonial cite {}
  .comment cite {}

- For marking up a full citation in a bibliography:
  .bibliography cite {}

- And for general use of titles in text (which does seem to be the  
default usage of  if not in another context):

  cite {}


What's the alternative? Just say "em, i, cite and dfn mean 'italics'"?
That doesn't seem particularly useful either. Why not just drop all  
but

 if that's

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

On 16/08/2009 12:21, Ian Hickson wrote:

Italics is the right format for almost all titles of works.


How are you measuring that?

For example, chapters in collections and articles are works and have 
titles, and those titles aren't typically distinguished with italics, at 
least in English.


"Titles of works are commonly distinguished from surrounding text" and 
"italics is a common format for many titles of works" would statements 
that would be hard to argue with.


--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > On Mon, 3 Aug 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> >> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:29 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> >> > Not all titles are citations, actually. For example, I've heard of 
> >> > the /Pirates of Penzance/, but I'm not citing it, just mentioning 
> >> > it in passing.
> >>
> >> No, that actually is a citation, whether you realize it or not. You 
> >> are making reference to a musical and are therefore citing it, even 
> >> in passing.
> >
> > Your definition of "citation" is far looser than my dictionary's ("a 
> > quotation from or reference to"). In fact your definition seems to be 
> > basically the same as HTML5's -- a title of a work. Unless you think 
> > that this should be valid use of :
> >
> > � I picked up my favourite book, and put it next to
> > � the painting I got from my aunt.
> >
> > I don't think that those references to works should use . Doing 
> > so has zero benefit, as far as I can tell.
> 
> No, No, NO. That is not what I mean at all. You again deliberately 
> misrepresent what I am trying to convey, that  should be for 
> citations, not for a subset of citations.

I'm really not deliberately misrepresenting anything, I'm trying to work 
out what you mean. It appears you are using the word "citation" in a 
different way than I am. I understand it to only mean mentions that make 
some reference to the contents of the source, such that mentioning 
something in passing is not a citation, but quoting from a source, or 
referencing statements made in that source, is a citation.

I agree that if you think that "citation" means any arbitrary reference, 
whether in passing or otherwise, then HTML4's  would be applicable 
in the cases you are suggesting.

However, then the question is whether you think that  should be 
applicable for the entire reference, or just the name of the source. In 
the former case (which appears to be what Wikipedia's templates are 
doing), I don't see why "I picked up my favourite book" would 
be non-conforming.

If we define HTML4's  as being any arbitrary reference or mention to 
a source, but limiting it to only the name of the source, then as far as I 
can tell this is equivalent to saying it is for titles of works, which is 
HTML5's definition, except possibly if you argue that sources include 
people, in which case HTML4 is a superset of HTML5's definition.

However, this is not my interpretation of what HTML4 says, and thus I find 
what HTML4 says to be a subset of what HTML5 says.


> I agree (and never suggested otherwise): those are in no way explicit 
> citations, as there is nothing specific about them that would justify 
> calling them citations. Pirates of Penzance, however is an 
> explicit reference to that work and therefore a citation, not "just" a 
> title of the work.

With the definition of "citation" that covers any arbitrary reference or 
mention, I don't see what the difference is between "a citation" and "a 
title of a work".


> > Why not? An orchestral arrangement is a work, and has a title -- the 
> > spec explicitly lists "score", "song", and "opera" as possible works, 
> > for instance.
> >
> > I've added "legal case report" to the list, to clarify that you can 
> > use  to name such reports.
> 
> So the definition of  in HTML5 should currently be "title of work 
> or something that could be construed as a title where one doesn't exist 
> in the explicit sense of 'title.'

As far as I can tell, legal case reports do have titles, and those are 
what is being marked up here.


> But not people's names, even if they're the citation, because using 
>  for citations is silly."

That's not the reason, no. The reason to avoid using it for people's names 
is that people's names are not usually typographically offset in the same 
way as titles, and that few people use the element in this way today, 
leading me to conclude that this is not a use case with enough support to 
warrant the element being defined in a way that includes people. We 
already have a number of other ways of marking up people's names, 
including the quite fine-grained vCard microdata vocabulary.


> > For example, the following is valid HTML5 but wouldn't be valid HTML4, 
> > since it's not a citation or reference to another source, but merely 
> > something mentioned in passing:
> >
> > � Today, as I was moving my copy of Dreamer's Void, I 
> > � hurt my back.
> 
> That's perfectly fine in HTML4. It's a citation, as I have explained 
> previously, and there's nothing in the HTML4 spec that prohibits that 
> use. Why are you misrepresenting the HTML4 spec?

Your interpretation and mine differ. As far as I can tell, the above isn't 
a citation.

Out of curiosity, would you consider the names in the following text to be 
citations?

   Today I went to Mike's apartment and saw Shyam.

Would you say the following is a conforming use of  in HTML4?:

   Today I went to Mike's apartment

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Smylers]

Erik Vorhes writes:

> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Smylers wrote:
> 
> > For words that you wish to have no distinct presentation from the
> > surrounding text -- words that readers don't need calling out to
> > them as being in any way 'special' -- simply don't mark them up.
> 
> Interesting point. Should the HTML5 specification explicitly admonish
> against using microformats, microdata, RDFa, and the like?

Possibly I stated the above too strongly.

In general invisible metadata doesn't have a great history; the most
successful systems involving machine-parsed web pages seem to involve
machines parsing the human visible parts of pages rather than things
like .

But I didn't actually mean to go so far as to say these should never be
used.  If somebody can do something useful with names marked up as
metadata then that's a reason for marking it up in some way.  But HTML 5
doesn't need a specific element for that; there's the generic microdata
syntax.

If marking up people's names when citing them becomes really common then
a future version of the spec could mint an element for that (like
happened with , a common metadata pattern).

But there still wouldn't be a call for an element which sometimes
indicates its contents should be displayed to the reader in a way which
indicates they are the title of a work and sometimes indicates its a
person's name.

Smylers

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Smylers]

Erik Vorhes writes:

> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Smylers wrote:
> 
> > As Ian has pointed out, the above is technically non-conforming with
> > what the HTML 4 spec claims.  But it's how I've been using  for
> > years, since it makes sense and has a use.
> 
> I defy you to show me in the HTML 4.01 specification where something
> like the following is nonconforming:

By "the above" I was refering to my previous paragraphs -- in which I'd
just described my use of .  I am admitting that _my_ definition
isn't permitted by HTML 4.

I am _not_ claiming that your definition isn't allowed in HTML 4; I'm
claiming that the HTML 4 definition, including things like marking up
names, isn't particularly useful.

For this example:

> I like to read nonfiction, such as John Adams, but I
> had more time for that when I was a professional academic.

How do you want that to be rendered?  The conventional presentation
would be for "John Adams" simply to be rendered in exactly the same way
as the surrounding text, with the reader being given no information at
all that those words are in some way special.

Smylers

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Smylers wrote:
>
> For words that you wish to have no distinct presentation from the
> surrounding text -- words that readers don't need calling out to them as
> being in any way 'special' -- simply don't mark them up.
>

Interesting point. Should the HTML5 specification explicitly admonish
against using microformats, microdata, RDFa, and the like?

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
> Currently,  in HTML5 isn't for collecting anything, it's purely to
> provide a hook for styling.

Please explain how , if it is only a hook for styling titles of
works, is any different from  in the HTML5 specification, since an
italicized title of a work qualifies as "prose whose typical
typographic presentation is italicized."

Erik

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:50 AM, Remco wrote:
>> I defy you to show me in the HTML 4.01 specification where something
>> like the following is nonconforming:
>>
>> I like to read nonfiction, such as John Adams, but I
>> had more time for that when I was a professional academic.
>>
>
> I don't think John Adams is a name of a person in this context. It is
> a group of works.
>

Sorry, I shouldn't have been so obscure. I was referring to _John
Adams_, by David McCullough, not John Adams the person or the
collected works of John Adams.

The point I'm trying to make by referencing the above HTML fragment is
that using  to surround the title of a work is perfectly
acceptable in HTML 4.01, which Ian claims not to be the case.

Erik

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Remco]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Smylers wrote:
>>
>> As Ian has pointed out, the above is technically non-conforming with
>> what the HTML 4 spec claims.  But it's how I've been using  for
>> years, since it makes sense and has a use.
>
>
> I defy you to show me in the HTML 4.01 specification where something
> like the following is nonconforming:
>
> I like to read nonfiction, such as John Adams, but I
> had more time for that when I was a professional academic.
>
> Erik
>

I don't think John Adams is a name of a person in this context. It is
a group of works.

Remco

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Smylers wrote:
>
> As Ian has pointed out, the above is technically non-conforming with
> what the HTML 4 spec claims.  But it's how I've been using  for
> years, since it makes sense and has a use.


I defy you to show me in the HTML 4.01 specification where something
like the following is nonconforming:

I like to read nonfiction, such as John Adams, but I
had more time for that when I was a professional academic.

Erik

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Smylers]

Erik Vorhes writes:

> So the definition of  in HTML5 should currently be "title of
> work or something that could be construed as a title where one doesn't
> exist in the explicit sense of 'title.' But not people's names, even
> if they're the citation, because using  for citations is silly."

Hi Erik.  Rather than start with the  element and think how  you
can use it, I find it easier to understand t'other way round:

When writing text you sometimes want some words to be presented
differently (typically in italics), to convey some information to
readers.  If the semantic you wish the italicized text to convey is that
it's the title of a published work, then  is the appropriate HTML
element to use for this.

(When word processing many folks simply use italics, meaning titles are
marked up the same as, say, emphasis.  This precludes later changing the
house style in a way which distinguishes them, and from having voice
output use different voice variants for each.)

If you wish the graphical presentation of such titles to be something
other than italic (underlined perhaps, or in a different colour, or in
normal text but surrounded by quote marks) then you can achieve that
with CSS.  But the semantic is still there in the document, so can still
be conveyed to all readers and listeners, regardless of their
environment and user-agents.

For words that you wish to have no distinct presentation from the
surrounding text -- words that readers don't need calling out to them as
being in any way 'special' -- simply don't mark them up.

As Ian has pointed out, the above is technically non-conforming with
what the HTML 4 spec claims.  But it's how I've been using  for
years, since it makes sense and has a use.

Other proposed definitions of  may more closely correspond to the
English word "cite", but the set of phrases they would denote do not
seem to be a useful set of things to lump together; they do not match
any set of things which are typically conveyed to readers in a
particular way (for example by typographical conventions).

While HTML 5's definition of  is a useful thing to have an element
for, the name 'cite' is not a great choice to label that.  However the
element already exists; its previous definition has overlap with the
useful definition; and its default display in existing browsers is the
common typographic style for the useful definition (which gives weight
to the idea that the HTML 5 definition is actually what at least some
people intended in the first place, or have already been using it as).

So tweaking the definition to be more useful seems better than inventing
a new element with a better name.

Smylers

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Aug 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:29 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>> > Not all titles are citations, actually. For example, I've heard of the
>> > /Pirates of Penzance/, but I'm not citing it, just mentioning it in
>> > passing.
>>
>> No, that actually is a citation, whether you realize it or not. You are
>> making reference to a musical and are therefore citing it, even in
>> passing.
>
> Your definition of "citation" is far looser than my dictionary's ("a
> quotation from or reference to"). In fact your definition seems to be
> basically the same as HTML5's -- a title of a work. Unless you think that
> this should be valid use of :
>
>   I picked up my favourite book, and put it next to
>   the painting I got from my aunt.
>
> I don't think that those references to works should use . Doing so
> has zero benefit, as far as I can tell.
>


No, No, NO. That is not what I mean at all. You again deliberately
misrepresent what I am trying to convey, that  should be for
citations, not for a subset of citations.

I agree (and never suggested otherwise): those are in no way explicit
citations, as there is nothing specific about them that would justify
calling them citations. Pirates of Penzance, however is
an explicit reference to that work and therefore a citation, not
"just" a title of the work.


>
> Why not? An orchestral arrangement is a work, and has a title -- the spec
> explicitly lists "score", "song", and "opera" as possible works, for
> instance.
>
> I've added "legal case report" to the list, to clarify that you can use
>  to name such reports.
>


So the definition of  in HTML5 should currently be "title of
work or something that could be construed as a title where one doesn't
exist in the explicit sense of 'title.' But not people's names, even
if they're the citation, because using  for citations is silly."



>> Unless by "title of work" you mean "standard citation for an item,
>> usually its title"; but then  really means what it is defined as
>> in the HTML 4.01 specification.
>
> Unless you have a very loose definition of "citation", or unless you
> consider a person to be a possible "source",  in HTML5 is a strict
> superset of HTML4's definition.
>
> For example, the following is valid HTML5 but wouldn't be valid HTML4,
> since it's not a citation or reference to another source, but merely
> something mentioned in passing:
>
>   Today, as I was moving my copy of Dreamer's Void, I
>   hurt my back.
>


That's perfectly fine in HTML4. It's a citation, as I have explained
previously, and there's nothing in the HTML4 spec that prohibits that
use. Why are you misrepresenting the HTML4 spec?


>> Besides, there's already , which could be used to identify "title
>> text" or something like that.
>
> It has the wrong default styles.


So does , in many contexts even if we're relying on the
definition in HTML5 as it stands.


>  is also used to mark up titles that aren't citations, as shown by
> Philip's data.


Again. Those *are* citations.


>> There's no reason to limit it to a subset of citation (more below).
>
> I honestly don't understand how HTML5 is a subset of HTML4 here, unless
> you mean people's names, which as far as I can tell aren't commonly used
> with , and for which there is no benefit to using .


I believe they are more commonly used than you are willing to admit.



> Wikipedia's output is not an argument for consuming . In fact, what
> they're doing is an argument against keeping  for that purpose: they
> are explicitly overriding the only behaviour  gives them (italics)
> and then going out of their way to reintroduce that effect on a ! If
> that's not an argument for changing the meaning of  to something
> more convenient, I don't know what is.


Yes, Wikipedia's overall markup is problematic, but you seemed to be
needing some actual evidence that  is used for more than simply
"title of work" other than blog commenter names (which for some
inexplicable reason you have rejected out-of-hand as evidence that
 is used for people's names and other non-title citations).



>> Any reference to a title of a work is by definition a citation.
>> Therefore you are limiting  to a subset of citation.
>
> I disagree with your definition of "citation".


I'm sorry the New Oxford American Dictionary isn't good enough for you. I quote:

- a quotation from or reference to a book, paper, or author, esp. in a
scholarly work
- a mention of a praiseworthy act or achievement in an official
report, esp. that of a member of the armed forces in wartime
- a note accompanying an award, describing the reasons for it
- [in Law] a reference to a former tried case, used as guidance in the
trying of comparable cases or in support of an argument



>
> Unless you can demonstrate that there is a concrete benefit to doing what
> you describe, I do not think it is a good idea. There are concrete
> benefits to the definition currently i

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 3 Aug 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:29 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
> > Not all titles are citations, actually. For example, I've heard of the 
> > /Pirates of Penzance/, but I'm not citing it, just mentioning it in 
> > passing.
>
> No, that actually is a citation, whether you realize it or not. You are 
> making reference to a musical and are therefore citing it, even in 
> passing.

Your definition of "citation" is far looser than my dictionary's ("a 
quotation from or reference to"). In fact your definition seems to be 
basically the same as HTML5's -- a title of a work. Unless you think that 
this should be valid use of :

   I picked up my favourite book, and put it next to 
   the painting I got from my aunt.

I don't think that those references to works should use . Doing so 
has zero benefit, as far as I can tell.


> > > See ; note near the top of the source: 
> > > ...
> >
> > My statement stands, on the aggregate:
> >
> > On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Philip Taylor wrote:
> > >
> > > See http://philip.html5.org/data/cite-attribute-values.txt for some 
> > > data. (Looks like non-URI values are quite rare.)
> 
> I agree that @cite is rarely used as anything other than a URI; I was 
> attempting to demonstrate that even very recent uses of HTML don't 
> necessarily "get" that it is for URIs (the site I referenced launched 
> last month, as I recall).

Mistakes are common with HTML, sure.


> > While we're at it, Philip had other data:
> >
> > > Also maybe relevant: see http://philip.html5.org/data/cite.txt for 
> > > some older data about . (Looks like non-title uses are very 
> > > common.)
> >
> > This seems to support my point that  is used for a whole variety 
> > of purposes, like , , , HTML4's , and HTML5's . 
> > Very few, actually much fewer than I had remembered from my last look 
> > at the data, are names of people, citations or otherwise.
> 
> I actually took this information the other way, that there are indeed 
> other uses for  out there beyond titles.

I don't think anyone has argued otherwise. I've only argued that of the 
uses that  is put to, the only ones that are common but have no 
other more appropriate elements (i.e. aren't flat out mistakes) are 
citations and titles, and not people's names.


> > On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> > >
> > > > A new element wouldn't work in legacy UAs, so it wouldn't be as 
> > > > compelling a solution. Also,  is already being used for this 
> > > > purpose.
> > >
> > > My preference would be for  to retain the flexibility it has 
> > > in pre-HTML5 specifications, which would include referencing titles.
> >
> > The flexibility doesn't seem as useful as limiting it to titles. What 
> > is the problem solved by allowing names to be marked up in the same 
> > manner as titles? The problem solved by allowing titles specifically 
> > to be marked up is that titles are usually typographically offset from 
> > the surrounding text in a distinctive fashion. This doesn't apply to 
> > names. Reusing the same element for both encourages authors to use 
> >  for both which makes it harder for them to get the right 
> > typographic effect, leading to a lower quality of typography overall. 
> > I think this is a bad thing.
> 
> This is not just about names. It allows other (non-title) text to be 
> identified as a citation. If  is identified as "title of work," 
> you can't cite many major orchestral arrangements at all, nor can you 
> cite legal decisions.

Why not? An orchestral arrangement is a work, and has a title -- the spec 
explicitly lists "score", "song", and "opera" as possible works, for 
instance.

I've added "legal case report" to the list, to clarify that you can use 
 to name such reports.


> Unless by "title of work" you mean "standard citation for an item, 
> usually its title"; but then  really means what it is defined as 
> in the HTML 4.01 specification.

Unless you have a very loose definition of "citation", or unless you 
consider a person to be a possible "source",  in HTML5 is a strict 
superset of HTML4's definition.

For example, the following is valid HTML5 but wouldn't be valid HTML4, 
since it's not a citation or reference to another source, but merely 
something mentioned in passing:

   Today, as I was moving my copy of Dreamer's Void, I
   hurt my back.


> > > If backwards compatibility is that big a concern, why does HTML5 use 
> > >  outside of  elements?
> >
> > There were no existing elements that could be reused for many of the 
> > new semantics. When there were, we used them (e.g. , , , 
> > , , ).
> 
> I agree that there aren't always existing elements for the new semantics 
> included in HTML5, but I don't believe that backwards compatibility is 
> as big a concern as you claim it is.

Ok.


> HTML5's re-use of , for example, is completely broken in every 
> extant browser.

Yeah,  is a complicated case where a number of factors have 
prevented an ideal soluti

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Jeremy Keith]

Hixie asked:
What is the problem solved by allowing names to be marked up in the  
same manner as  titles?


They are both entities being referenced (cited). It seems arbitrary to  
me to forbid referencing names with the  element. HTML 4 already  
allows it, authors would have to change their existing behaviour  
(something to be avoided wherever possible) and when the meanings of  
other existing elements—, , —are being *expanded*, I  
can't follow the logic in *restricting* the meaning of an element  
already being used broadly.



The problem solved by allowing titles specifically to be marked up
is that titles are usually typographically offset from the surrounding
text in a distinctive fashion. This doesn't apply to names.


That's what CSS is for.

I haven't changed the spec. I continue to hold the position that  
covering
titles of works is more useful than covering titles of works and  
names of
people, and more useful than covering only names of people or works  
that

are explicitly cited.


Okay, but it won't make any difference to authors like myself who will  
continue to use  to mark up names.


We can do this either by applying a Kenobian interpretation of the  
spec (e.g. a person is the work of their parents/peers/society and a  
person's name is therefore a "title of work") or we can do it more  
flagrantly by simply disagreeing with the spec—a precedent for this  
would be the  element in HTML4 where the example in the spec  
showed it being used for dialogue; authors (rightly) ignored the spec.


The meaning of the  element is  a classic example of a "language  
feature" rather than a "platform feature".  and  are  
examples of platform features i.e. features that require work by  
browser makers to implement. As you have correctly pointed out many  
times, if browser makers refuse to implement a platform feature,  
there's no point having it in the spec; the spec would be fiction.


When it comes to language features, the browser makers don't have to  
do much—just make sure the element shows up in the DOM. However, if  
authors refuse to implement a language feature as described in the  
spec, then the spec becomes fiction.


Platform features need buy-in from browser makers.

Language features need buy-in from authors.

Authors use the  element to mark up names. It is often the most  
semantically appropriate element for marking up a name (and then in  
itself is a good enough reason to use it—default browser styling  
doesn't come into it). I don't think it makes sense to ignore the  
existing behaviour of authors.


Authors such as myself will continue to use the  element to mark  
up names; our markup will still be conforming; validators won't flag  
up our choices as errors.


Like I said, you can keep the spec as it is if you want but know that  
that particular part of the spec (detailing usage of the   
element) will be a work of fiction.


Eric Vorhes wrote:

This isn't about including names of
people; that is just the most obvious non-title form of citation. This
is about properly understanding what a citation can be and writing the
specification for the  element to account for those
possibilities. Citations are references to works, people, etc. By
limiting it to "title of work" you are actually limiting it to a
subset of a subset, as many objects worth citing don't have
conventional titles.


I agree. I don't think the spec should be micro-managing semantic  
decisions better left to authors.


Let me explain with another example I used on IRC earlier...

Suppose you're marking up a . What element do you use to contain  
your form field and your ? Some authors use s. Some  
authors use s. Some authors use s. We could argue (we have  
argued) about which is the most appropriate but in the end, it's the  
author's choice.


Choosing an element to mark up a piece of content isn't always a  
Boolean proposition. Sometimes there is an obvious "correct" choice  
(paragraphs of text should probably be marked up with the  element)  
but more often than not, different authors will make different  
choices. And that's okay. Unless it's a flagrant disregard for the  
semantic meaning of the element (e.g. using the  element for  
non-tabular content), authors should be allowed to choose what *they*  
feel is the most semantically appropriate element.


I choose to mark up names with the  element. Other authors  
choose not to. We will all continue to exercise our personal choices  
even if the HTML5 spec tries to restrict the meaning of the element.


Jeremy

--
Jeremy Keith

a d a c t i o

http://adactio.com/

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:29 AM, Ian Hickson  wrote:
>
> >
> > See ; note near the top of the source:
> > ...
>
> My statement stands, on the aggregate:
>
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Philip Taylor wrote:
> >
> > See http://philip.html5.org/data/cite-attribute-values.txt for some
> > data. (Looks like non-URI values are quite rare.)
>

I agree that @cite is rarely used as anything other than a URI; I was
attempting to demonstrate that even very recent uses of HTML don't
necessarily "get" that it is for URIs (the site I referenced launched
last month, as I recall).

>
> While we're at it, Philip had other data:
>
> > Also maybe relevant: see http://philip.html5.org/data/cite.txt for some
> > older data about . (Looks like non-title uses are very common.)
>
> This seems to support my point that  is used for a whole variety of
> purposes, like , , , HTML4's , and HTML5's . Very
> few, actually much fewer than I had remembered from my last look at the
> data, are names of people, citations or otherwise.
>

I actually took this information the other way, that there are indeed
other uses for  out there beyond titles.

>
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> >
> > > A new element wouldn't work in legacy UAs, so it wouldn't be as
> > > compelling a solution. Also,  is already being used for this
> > > purpose.
> >
> > My preference would be for  to retain the flexibility it has in
> > pre-HTML5 specifications, which would include referencing titles.
>
> The flexibility doesn't seem as useful as limiting it to titles. What is
> the problem solved by allowing names to be marked up in the same manner as
> titles? The problem solved by allowing titles specifically to be marked up
> is that titles are usually typographically offset from the surrounding
> text in a distinctive fashion. This doesn't apply to names. Reusing the
> same element for both encourages authors to use  for both which
> makes it harder for them to get the right typographic effect, leading to a
> lower quality of typography overall. I think this is a bad thing.
>

This is not just about names. It allows other (non-title) text to be
identified as a citation. If  is identified as "title of work,"
you can't cite many major orchestral arrangements at all, nor can you
cite legal decisions. Unless by "title of work" you mean "standard
citation for an item, usually its title"; but then  really means
what it is defined as in the HTML 4.01 specification.

>
> > If backwards compatibility is that big a concern, why does HTML5 use
> >  outside of  elements?
>
> There were no existing elements that could be reused for many of the new
> semantics. When there were, we used them (e.g. , , , ,
> , ).
>

I agree that there aren't always existing elements for the new
semantics included in HTML5, but I don't believe that backwards
compatibility is as big a concern as you claim it is. HTML5's re-use
of , for example, is completely broken in every extant
browser. (See 
for evidence).

Besides, there's already , which could be used to identify "title
text" or something like that.


> > > What is the pressing need for an element for citations, which would
> > > require that we overload  with two uses?
> >
> > A title can be a citation, but not all citations are titles. What's the
> > pressing need for limiting  only to titles?
>
> As described above, the need to have an element for titles is that there
> are typographic conventions that apply to titles. What is the pressing
> need for an element for citations, which would require that we overload
>  with two uses?
>

As I have said previously, there aren't consistent typographic
conventions that apply to titles. The "pressing need" is that 
is already used to define citations. There's no reason to limit it to
a subset of citation (more below).

>
> But why does that have value? How would you use this information?
>

To collect citation information. I don't see how that as any less
value that collecting titles of works, especially since not all works
have titles or means of reference that would constitute a conventional
"title."

>
> > >> > Note that HTML5 now has a more detailed way of marking up
> > >> > citations, using the Bibtex vocabulary. I think this removes the
> > >> > need for using the  element in the manner you describe.
> > >>
> > >> Since this is supposed to be the case, why shouldn't HTML5 just ditch
> > >>  altogether? (Aside from "backward compatibility," which is
> > >> beside the point of the question.)
> > >
> > > Backwards compatibility (with legacy documents, which uses it to mean
> > > "title of work") is the main reason.
> >
> > I'd beg to differ, regarding "legacy documents." See, for example the
> > automated citation generation at Wikipedia:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates
>
> What specifically am I looking for here? This doesn't seem to have any
> relevance to HTML.
>

Wikipedia autom

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> >>
> >> If  is exclusively for titles, it shouldn't be called .
> >
> > Sure, but we're about 15 years too late for that.
> 
> Well, no: the as far as I have been able to determine, every HTML 
> specification (before HTML5) did not limit this element to titles.

I meant that we're too late to rename the element.


> > In practice, people haven't been confused between these two attributes 
> > as far as we can tell. People who use  seem to use it for 
> > titles, and people who use cite="" seem to use it for URLs. (The 
> > latter is rare.)
> 
> See ; note near the top of the source: 
> ...

My statement stands, on the aggregate:

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Philip Taylor wrote:
> 
> See http://philip.html5.org/data/cite-attribute-values.txt for some 
> data. (Looks like non-URI values are quite rare.)

While we're at it, Philip had other data:

> Also maybe relevant: see http://philip.html5.org/data/cite.txt for some 
> older data about . (Looks like non-title uses are very common.)

This seems to support my point that  is used for a whole variety of 
purposes, like , , , HTML4's , and HTML5's . Very 
few, actually much fewer than I had remembered from my last look at the 
data, are names of people, citations or otherwise.


On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>
> > A new element wouldn't work in legacy UAs, so it wouldn't be as 
> > compelling a solution. Also,  is already being used for this 
> > purpose.
> 
> My preference would be for  to retain the flexibility it has in 
> pre-HTML5 specifications, which would include referencing titles.

The flexibility doesn't seem as useful as limiting it to titles. What is 
the problem solved by allowing names to be marked up in the same manner as 
titles? The problem solved by allowing titles specifically to be marked up 
is that titles are usually typographically offset from the surrounding 
text in a distinctive fashion. This doesn't apply to names. Reusing the 
same element for both encourages authors to use  for both which 
makes it harder for them to get the right typographic effect, leading to a 
lower quality of typography overall. I think this is a bad thing.


> If backwards compatibility is that big a concern, why does HTML5 use 
>  outside of  elements?

Because inventing a new element in that particular case turns out to be 
non-trivial (pretty much every synonym for "caption" is already used by 
some HTML element), and we can afford to wait to get  done.


> And if the definition of new elements is such a concern, why introduce
> *any* new elements? (Please forgive the snark.)

There were no existing elements that could be reused for many of the new 
semantics. When there were, we used them (e.g. , , , , 
, ).


> > What is the pressing need for an element for citations, which would 
> > require that we overload  with two uses?
> 
> A title can be a citation, but not all citations are titles. What's the 
> pressing need for limiting  only to titles?

As described above, the need to have an element for titles is that there 
are typographic conventions that apply to titles. What is the pressing 
need for an element for citations, which would require that we overload 
 with two uses?


> >> I understand HTML5's attempts to provide semantic value to such 
> >> elements as , , and . To at the same time remove 
> >> semantic value at the same time is completely asinine.
> >
> > If 's original meaning has value, that is true; what is its 
> > value?
> 
> I would assume that this would be obvious.  both denotes and 
> connotes "citation."

But why does that have value? How would you use this information?


> >> > Note that HTML5 now has a more detailed way of marking up 
> >> > citations, using the Bibtex vocabulary. I think this removes the 
> >> > need for using the  element in the manner you describe.
> >>
> >> Since this is supposed to be the case, why shouldn't HTML5 just ditch 
> >>  altogether? (Aside from "backward compatibility," which is 
> >> beside the point of the question.)
> >
> > Backwards compatibility (with legacy documents, which uses it to mean 
> > "title of work") is the main reason.
> 
> I'd beg to differ, regarding "legacy documents." See, for example the 
> automated citation generation at Wikipedia: 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates

What specifically am I looking for here? This doesn't seem to have any 
relevance to HTML.


> In addition, the comments at zeldman.com use  to reference authors 
> of comments. While that specific example is younger than HTML5, this is 
> merely an example of a relatively common use-case for  that does 
> not use it to signify "title of work."

As I said, the most common use of  is to mark up italics. I agree 
entirely that it's misused.


> >> There is no reason at all why it can't be defined as "citing whom".
> >
> > The main reason would be that there doesn

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 10:17 AM, Kristof
Zelechovski wrote:
>  1. If you cite a person, the person you cite does not become a citation
> because of that.  Putting the person inside the CITE element distorts the
> meaning.

If you are citing a person (either as someone worth quoting or as,
say, the photographer of an image), how does using  to identify
the citation distort the meaning?


>  2. The example Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales> is invalid because "Canterbury Tales" are not being cited, at
> least not in the title page.

Why not? It seems clear to me that one title is citing the other.


>  3. The semantic potential does not decrease uniformly with specificity.
> Rather, there is an optimal value somewhere in the middle of specificity.
> Arguably, that optimum is attained with CITE reserved for titles.

Arguably, the optimum is attained with  reserved for citations.


>  4. Of course titles are not always styled the same way.  However, there is
> a requirement that the presentation makes sense in most cases when CSS is
> not supported.  The cases where styling all titles in the same way makes the
> information hard to understand are scarce.

This doesn't explain why  needs to be used exclusively used for
titles. (And I didn't realize that HTML was really just for use as
styling hooks. There's no audible difference between MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers and MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers.)


>  5. Random markup errors a few pages do not constitute an obstacle here,
> nor do errors in template code (they are ubiquitous once deployed but they
> are easy to fix, at least at Wikipedia).

Except that Wikipedia is not erroneous in its usage of . It is
declaring conformance to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which is based off of
the HTML 4.01 specification, which defines  as "a citation or a
reference to other sources."

To the issue of  in HTML5, using  as "title of work"
provides for no distinction between editions or translations of works.


>  6. It does not mean anything to say "this is a citation"; this definition
> is too ambiguous to be useful.

I obviously disagree. " identifies a title" is too narrow a
definition to be useful.


Erik Vorhes

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Philip Taylor]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>
>> In practice, people haven't been confused between these two attributes as
>> far as we can tell. People who use  seem to use it for titles, and
>> people who use cite="" seem to use it for URLs. (The latter is rare.)
>>
>
> See ; note near the top of the source:
> ...

See http://philip.html5.org/data/cite-attribute-values.txt for some
data. (Looks like non-URI values are quite rare.)
Also maybe relevant: see http://philip.html5.org/data/cite.txt for
some older data about . (Looks like non-title uses are very
common.)

-- 
Philip Taylor
exc...@gmail.com

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> If  is exclusively for titles, it shouldn't be called .
>
> Sure, but we're about 15 years too late for that.
>

Well, no: the as far as I have been able to determine, every HTML
specification (before HTML5) did not limit this element to titles.

>
> In practice, people haven't been confused between these two attributes as
> far as we can tell. People who use  seem to use it for titles, and
> people who use cite="" seem to use it for URLs. (The latter is rare.)
>

See ; note near the top of the source:
...

>
> A new element wouldn't work in legacy UAs, so it wouldn't be as compelling
> a solution. Also,  is already being used for this purpose.
>

My preference would be for  to retain the flexibility it has in
pre-HTML5 specifications, which would include referencing titles. If
backwards compatibility is that big a concern, why does HTML5 use
 outside of  elements? See:
http://twitter.com/rem/status/2869618614

And if the definition of new elements is such a concern, why introduce
*any* new elements? (Please forgive the snark.)

>
> What is the pressing need for an element for citations, which would
> require that we overload  with two uses?
>

A title can be a citation, but not all citations are titles. What's
the pressing need for limiting  only to titles?

>
>> I understand HTML5's attempts to provide semantic value to such elements
>> as , , and . To at the same time remove semantic value at
>> the same time is completely asinine.
>
> If 's original meaning has value, that is true; what is its value?

I would assume that this would be obvious.  both denotes and
connotes "citation."

>
>> > Note that HTML5 now has a more detailed way of marking up citations,
>> > using the Bibtex vocabulary. I think this removes the need for using
>> > the  element in the manner you describe.
>>
>> Since this is supposed to be the case, why shouldn't HTML5 just ditch
>>  altogether? (Aside from "backward compatibility," which is beside
>> the point of the question.)
>
> Backwards compatibility (with legacy documents, which uses it to mean
> "title of work") is the main reason.
>

I'd beg to differ, regarding "legacy documents." See, for example the
automated citation generation at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates

In addition, the comments at zeldman.com use  to reference
authors of comments. While that specific example is younger than
HTML5, this is merely an example of a relatively common use-case for
 that does not use it to signify "title of work."

>
>> There is no reason at all why it can't be defined as "citing whom".
>
> The main reason would be that there doesn't appear to be a useful purpose
> to doing that.
>

The above references suggest otherwise. There are plenty of instances
where one would want to cite people rather than just a "title of
work"; blog commenters are only the most obvious example.

>
> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Kristof
>> Zelechovski wrote:
>> > I can imagine two reasons the CITE element cannot be defined as "citing
>> > whom":
>> >  1. Existing tools may assume it contains a title.
>>
>> Existing tools (which I would assume follow the HTML 4.01 spec)
>
> It appears this assumption is mistaken.
>

Really? Please provide evidence. Existing tools that treat 
exclusively as "title of work" do so against every HTML specification
out there (i.e., HTML 4.01 and earlier).

>
>> While the HTML 4.01 specification is hardly perfect, I don't see the
>> value in limiting the semantic potential of the  element in HTML5.
>
> As far as I can tell, increasing it from citations to titles of works is
> actually increasing its semantic potential, not limiting it.
>

Well, no. It's making it more exclusive. Defining  as "title of
work" increases its specificity, but limits its semantic potential. As
I noted before, all titles are citations, but not all citations are
titles. By defining  as an element that identifies a "citation"
you allow for "title of work" while not excluding other justifiable
uses of this element, e.g., "cited person."


>
> Indeed, there is a lot of misuse of the element -- as alternatives for
> , , , and HTML5's meaning of , in particular.
>
> Expanding it to cover the meanings of , , and  doesn't seem as
> useful as expanding it just to cover works.
>

I believe you mean "limiting it just to cover works" here. By
requesting  to retain a definition of "this is a citation," I am
not advocating that it be allowed to overlap , , or . (I
realize you were responding to someone else's message, here. What I've
suggested allows  to retain its semantic value.)

>
> I think it's clear that people want to use  for things other than
> citations, and in fact do use it that way widely. If we're increasing it
> past just citations, then there seems to be clear value to using it to
> mark up titles; there doesn't seem to be much value in mar

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> > I don't understand why it would be more useful. Having an element for 
> > the typographic purpose of marking up titles seems more useful than an 
> > element for the purpose of indicating what is a citation.
> 
> Why is it more useful?

Because typographically, titles of works are styled differently. In the 15 
or more years that  has supposedly been used for citations, I'm only 
aware of one actual use of that semantic, and that use has since been 
discontinued. Meanwhile, lots of people use  for "title of work".


> If  is exclusively for titles, it shouldn't be called .

Sure, but we're about 15 years too late for that.


> In addition to the semantic difference between a title and a citation, 
> limiting  to titles potentially raises confusion between this 
> element and the cite attribute (for  and ), as the latter 
> is limited to URLs.

In practice, people haven't been confused between these two attributes as 
far as we can tell. People who use  seem to use it for titles, and 
people who use cite="" seem to use it for URLs. (The latter is rare.)


> While it makes some sense, I suppose, to limit the cite attribute to 
> URLs, it makes absolutely no sense to limit the  element only to 
> titles. If it's so pressing for there to be an element allowed in the 
>  to mark up titles, why not create a new element for that purpose

A new element wouldn't work in legacy UAs, so it wouldn't be as compelling 
a solution. Also,  is already being used for this purpose.


> or allow for a -specific attribute to note that designation?

What is the pressing need for an element for citations, which would 
require that we overload  with two uses?


> I understand HTML5's attempts to provide semantic value to such elements 
> as , , and . To at the same time remove semantic value at 
> the same time is completely asinine.

If 's original meaning has value, that is true; what is its value?


> > Note that HTML5 now has a more detailed way of marking up citations, 
> > using the Bibtex vocabulary. I think this removes the need for using 
> > the  element in the manner you describe.
> 
> Since this is supposed to be the case, why shouldn't HTML5 just ditch 
>  altogether? (Aside from "backward compatibility," which is beside 
> the point of the question.)

Backwards compatibility (with legacy documents, which uses it to mean 
"title of work") is the main reason.


On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Bruce Lawson wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:36:34 +0100, Kristof Zelechovski
>  wrote:
> 
> > The CITE tag does not mean "I am a citation".  It is as confusing for 
> > novices as can be but the specification cannot do anything about it 
> > because it is already established.  It means "Citing what?" and it 
> > does not mean "Citing whom?".
>
> There is no reason at all why it can't be defined as "citing whom".

The main reason would be that there doesn't appear to be a useful purpose 
to doing that.


On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Kristof
> Zelechovski wrote:
> > I can imagine two reasons the CITE element cannot be defined as "citing
> > whom":
> >  1. Existing tools may assume it contains a title.
> 
> Existing tools (which I would assume follow the HTML 4.01 spec)

It appears this assumption is mistaken.


> While the HTML 4.01 specification is hardly perfect, I don't see the 
> value in limiting the semantic potential of the  element in HTML5.

As far as I can tell, increasing it from citations to titles of works is 
actually increasing its semantic potential, not limiting it.


On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, Philip Taylor wrote:
> 
> In practical usage it seems to be used for more than titles: 
> . (But I haven't tried working 
> out what else it is used for, or how commonly it's used for titles.)

Indeed, there is a lot of misuse of the element -- as alternatives for 
, , , and HTML5's meaning of , in particular.

Expanding it to cover the meanings of , , and  doesn't seem as 
useful as expanding it just to cover works.


On Thu, 9 Jul 2009, Brian Campbell wrote:
> 
> There are plenty of times when you want to mark up someone's name. For 
> instance, if you're quoting someone in a testimonial, you may want the 
> quote to appear in normal roman text, but the person's name who you are 
> quoting to be in italic and right aligned:
> 
> "Best value for the money!"
>   -- J. Random User
> 
> I might format this as:
> 
> 
>   Best value for the money!
>   J. Random User
> 

Certainly there are situation-specific cases where names might be styled, 
but I think it's mostly as a side-effect of location rather than because 
the text is a name. Consider:

 
   Best value for the money!
   J. Random User
 

 
   Best value for the money!
   A Random Book
 

 
   Best value for the money!
   Newspaper
 

 
   [23:02] evaluator: best value
   filename.log
 


> Here's an

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Brian
Campbell wrote:
> On Jun 5, 2009, at 3:53 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> I don't really understand what problem this is solving.
>>
>> HTML4 actually defined  more like what you describe above; we
>> changed it to be a "title of work" element rather than a "citation"
>> element because that's actually how people were using it.
>>
>> I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer to people,
>> because typographically people aren't generally marked up anyway. I don't
>> really see how you'd use it to refer to untitled works.
>>
>> Thus, I don't really think it makes sense to make the change you propose.
>
> There are plenty of times when you want to mark up someone's name. For
> instance, if you're quoting someone in a testimonial, you may want the quote
> to appear in normal roman text, but the person's name who you are quoting to
> be in italic and right aligned:
>
> "Best value for the money!"
>          -- J. Random User
>
> I might format this as:
>
> 
>  Best value for the money!
>  J. Random User
> 
>
> aside.testimonial cite:before { content: "—" }
> aside.testimonial cite { display: block; font-style: italic; text-align:
> right }
>
> Here's an example of someone asking about this specific use case, of how to
> mark up a testimonial and its source:
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/758785/what-is-the-best-way-to-markup-a-testimonial-in-xhtml
>
> (note that I don't believe the uses of  mentioned here,
> including by me, are correct, as the citation actually refers to the quote
> rather than being part of it, but I think the use of  is perfectly
> reasonable)
>
> The Mozilla Style Guide also uses formatting for  that I believe would
> be appropriate for citing either a work or a person:
>
> http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/writing/markup#quotations
>
> Of course, it's generally preferable to cite a work, rather than a person,
> as then the citation can be verified; if you just include a person's name,
> you have to assume that they mean "personal correspondence" which is
> unverifiable, or simply that the work is left unspecified and someone else
> will have to track it down. But people do write quotes and attribute the
> quotation to the person rather than the work, and as HTML is about marking
> up content and not about enforcing academic standards, I don't see why HTML5
> should be adding this unenforceable restriction that doesn't seem to add
> much value.
>
> I wonder if there is value in specifying the semantics of elements like
>  in much detail, in cases where there is no way to automatically
> verify those semantics and there is no use case for machine processing of
> those semantics. It seems that whatever the definition of  is, you're
> going to need to use a microformat or microdata or RDFa to actually provide
> semantics that are machine-readable, so the spec should be relatively loose
> and leave the precise semantics up to one of the more flexible systems for
> specifying semantics.
>
> -- Brian Campbell

FWIW, in the corporate sites I control I mark up testimonial
quotations using  and , like this:


  testimonial testimonial testimonial
  Joe Sixpack


This gives a good default display in the absence of CSS, and I modify
it a bit further for myself (making  display:block and adding a
::before glyph to it).

This seemed like the most reasonable solution at the time.  I settled
on this before the  discussion on this list.

~TJ

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Brian Campbell]

On Jun 5, 2009, at 3:53 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:


I don't really understand what problem this is solving.

HTML4 actually defined  more like what you describe above; we
changed it to be a "title of work" element rather than a "citation"
element because that's actually how people were using it.

I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer to  
people,
because typographically people aren't generally marked up anyway. I  
don't

really see how you'd use it to refer to untitled works.

Thus, I don't really think it makes sense to make the change you  
propose.


There are plenty of times when you want to mark up someone's name. For  
instance, if you're quoting someone in a testimonial, you may want the  
quote to appear in normal roman text, but the person's name who you  
are quoting to be in italic and right aligned:


"Best value for the money!"
  -- J. Random User

I might format this as:


  Best value for the money!
  J. Random User


aside.testimonial cite:before { content: "—" }
aside.testimonial cite { display: block; font-style: italic; text- 
align: right }


Here's an example of someone asking about this specific use case, of  
how to mark up a testimonial and its source:


http://stackoverflow.com/questions/758785/what-is-the-best-way-to-markup-a-testimonial-in-xhtml

(note that I don't believe the uses of  mentioned here,  
including by me, are correct, as the citation actually refers to the  
quote rather than being part of it, but I think the use of  is  
perfectly reasonable)


The Mozilla Style Guide also uses formatting for  that I believe  
would be appropriate for citing either a work or a person:


http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/writing/markup#quotations

Of course, it's generally preferable to cite a work, rather than a  
person, as then the citation can be verified; if you just include a  
person's name, you have to assume that they mean "personal  
correspondence" which is unverifiable, or simply that the work is left  
unspecified and someone else will have to track it down. But people do  
write quotes and attribute the quotation to the person rather than the  
work, and as HTML is about marking up content and not about enforcing  
academic standards, I don't see why HTML5 should be adding this  
unenforceable restriction that doesn't seem to add much value.


I wonder if there is value in specifying the semantics of elements  
like  in much detail, in cases where there is no way to  
automatically verify those semantics and there is no use case for  
machine processing of those semantics. It seems that whatever the  
definition of  is, you're going to need to use a microformat or  
microdata or RDFa to actually provide semantics that are machine- 
readable, so the spec should be relatively loose and leave the precise  
semantics up to one of the more flexible systems for specifying  
semantics.


-- Brian Campbell

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Jeremy Keith]

Chris wrote:
If "more then titles" means other uses of the CITE tag, as evidenced  
in [1],

they do not form any pattern.  They look more like random errors.


I've used the CITE element fairly extensively on my blog, *mostly* for  
titles (books, films) but also for people. If it's a proper noun, then  
it could potentially be marked up using CITE, IMHO.


--
Jeremy Keith

a d a c t i o

http://adactio.com/

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

If "more then titles" means other uses of the CITE tag, as evidenced in [1],
they do not form any pattern.  They look more like random errors.

If "more then titles" means "title and something else", I do not see much
harm in such syntax.

Chris

[1] .

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Philip Taylor]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Erik Vorhes wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Kristof
> Zelechovski wrote:
>> I can imagine two reasons the CITE element cannot be defined as "citing
>> whom":
>>  1. Existing tools may assume it contains a title.
>
> Existing tools (which I would assume follow the HTML 4.01 spec) would
> be mistaken in their implementation of the  element, then:
> "CITE: Contains a citation or reference to other sources." (See
> .) Moreover, in
> its sample usage, the HTML 4.01 spec uses  for more than titles.

In practical usage it seems to be used for more than titles:
. (But I haven't tried working
out what else it is used for, or how commonly it's used for titles.)

-- 
Philip Taylor
exc...@gmail.com

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Kristof
Zelechovski wrote:
> I can imagine two reasons the CITE element cannot be defined as "citing
> whom":
>  1. Existing tools may assume it contains a title.

Existing tools (which I would assume follow the HTML 4.01 spec) would
be mistaken in their implementation of the  element, then:
"CITE: Contains a citation or reference to other sources." (See
.) Moreover, in
its sample usage, the HTML 4.01 spec uses  for more than titles.

While the HTML 4.01 specification is hardly perfect, I don't see the
value in limiting the semantic potential of the  element in
HTML5.

Erik Vorhes

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

I can imagine two reasons the CITE element cannot be defined as "citing
whom":
  1. Existing tools may assume it contains a title.
  2. A title is conventionally typeset in italic because it is an expression
that is a proper name although it does not really look like one, whereas the
author does not pose such problems with interpretation.  Compare:
  2a. This page is about birds. --- That page is about "Birds". (different
meaning)
  2b. This is a play by Shakespeare. --- Shakespeare was born in England.
(the same meaning)
IMHO,
Chris

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Bruce Lawson]

On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:36:34 +0100, Kristof Zelechovski  
 wrote:



The CITE tag does not mean "I am a citation".  It is as confusing for
novices as can be but the specification cannot do anything about it  
because

it is already established.  It means "Citing what?" and it does not mean
"Citing whom?".


There is no reason at all why it can't be defined as "citing whom".

--
Hang loose and stay groovy,

Bruce Lawson
Web Evangelist
www.opera.com (work)
www.brucelawson.co.uk (personal)

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

The CITE tag does not mean "I am a citation".  It is as confusing for
novices as can be but the specification cannot do anything about it because
it is already established.  It means "Citing what?" and it does not mean
"Citing whom?".  A book title is the obvious answer to this question.  As I
understand it, the CITE element can contain an anchor around the title, so
you can have a URI as well.  In particular, it could be an ISBN URN,
although the browsers would have to support the ISBN namespace instead of
saying "Bad URL" or something.
HTH,
Chris

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> I don't understand why it would be more useful. Having an element for the
> typographic purpose of marking up titles seems more useful than an element
> for the purpose of indicating what is a citation.

Why is it more useful?

If  is exclusively for titles, it shouldn't be called . In
addition to the semantic difference between a title and a citation,
limiting  to titles potentially raises confusion between this
element and the cite attribute (for  and ), as the
latter is limited to URLs. Yes, elements and attributes are different
things. But in one context the concept "cite" is limited only to
titles (and forbids URLs); in another context "cite" is limited only
to URLs (and forbids titles).

While it makes some sense, I suppose, to limit the cite attribute to
URLs, it makes absolutely no sense to limit the  element only to
titles. If it's so pressing for there to be an element allowed in the
 to mark up titles, why not create a new element for that
purpose or allow for a -specific attribute to note that
designation?

I understand HTML5's attempts to provide semantic value to such
elements as , , and . To at the same time remove semantic
value at the same time is completely asinine.


> Note that HTML5 now has a more detailed way of marking up citations, using
> the Bibtex vocabulary. I think this removes the need for using the 
> element in the manner you describe.

Since this is supposed to be the case, why shouldn't HTML5 just ditch
 altogether? (Aside from "backward compatibility," which is
beside the point of the question.)


Erik Vorhes

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote:
> 
> That was interesting about the history of the cite element.
> 
> The import of my proposed change is that it would make the cite element
> much more useful than it would be than if it were limited to titles.
> 
> For example, take a page listing numerous famous quotations. Below might be
> one of them:
> 
> Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal
> that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what
> they ought to be.  -- William Hazlitt
> 
> That works well, yet that would be technically against what the spec
> in its current form allows.
> 
> A second example. Let's say a web page is to list a citation of a work.
> 
> This would be the citation, marked up according to the current HTML spec.
> 
> Hawking, Stephen.A Brief History of Time. Bantam: New York.
> 1988.
> 
> Most of the citation is not in the cite element.
> 
> The following should be an option for web authors.
> 
> Hawking, Stephen.A Brief History of Time. Bantam: New York.
> 1988.
> 
> That encases the entire citation in a cite element. The web author can
> re-style the cite
> element as desired.
> 
> Cite should be available for untitled works. For example:
> 
> Rock critics have universally praisedthe
> untitled fourth
> album  by Led Zeppelin.
> 
> While people aren't usually typographically marked up, they are cited.
> 
> The change would allow things other than titles to be placed into the cite
> element.
> That would make cite much more useful.

I don't understand why it would be more useful. Having an element for the 
typographic purpose of marking up titles seems more useful than an element 
for the purpose of indicating what is a citation.

Note that HTML5 now has a more detailed way of marking up citations, using 
the Bibtex vocabulary. I think this removes the need for using the  
element in the manner you describe.

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

Regarding your example:
Smith, John. The Triumph of HTML 5. 2015. 
New York: Faraway Press. 
I think we can agree that one could use such a syntax outside of running
text, as in appendices, footnotes and the like.  There is no much harm even
if the whole entry is italicized, because it will be clearly stand-alone.
Moreover, no validator is going to catch you on that, at least not in the
near future.  In the far future, on the other hand, the browsers will be
able to infer the meaning from the text and semantic markup like that will
be unnecessary.
I think this part of the standard should be taken with some flexibility.  It
is fine to make little extensions for unanticipated contexts.
And besides, regarding the problem with untitled works:
In his untitled work .
Will do.
IMHO,
Chris

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Andrew W. Hagen]

On 6/6/2009 4:10 AM, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:

Instead of:
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps.   --
William Hazlitt
Consider:
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps.
(William Hazlitt)
Reads equally good, if not better.
Bibliographic references are a topic of its own, and it is not going to be
solved with the CITE element alone.  Bibliography is a form of a database
while hTml is mostly about text.  The best HTML approximation to a list of
bibliographical references is a table, except that tables tend to be
unreadable when they are too wide.  You could also use
A brief history of time
and let the UA figure out the details.
Removing the default style from CITE is too fragile: using the style
attribute makes the code messy and using a class will not survive
copy-paste.
Chris

Thank you for your reply.

As you say, HTML neither is a ready-made bibliography-publishing system,
nor will it become one. The default styling of the cite element should 
not change.


It does make sense, however, to allow the cite element to be used more 
broadly
than just for titles. Arising from the change, one additional use out of 
many

for the cite element would be for whole bibliographic entries.

Under the current spec, we would have:

Smith, John. The Triumph of HTML 5. 2015. New York: Faraway 
Press.


Yet, since the author is citing the work, and a work comprises more than 
just
its title, that is unsatisfactory. The example below would reflect the 
author's intent.


Smith, John. The Triumph of HTML 
5. 2015. New York: Faraway Press. 


Regards,

Andrew Hagen
contact2...@awhlink.com

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

Instead of:
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps.  --
William Hazlitt
Consider:
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps.
(William Hazlitt)
Reads equally good, if not better.
Bibliographic references are a topic of its own, and it is not going to be
solved with the CITE element alone.  Bibliography is a form of a database
while hTml is mostly about text.  The best HTML approximation to a list of
bibliographical references is a table, except that tables tend to be
unreadable when they are too wide.  You could also use 
A brief history of time
and let the UA figure out the details.
Removing the default style from CITE is too fragile: using the style
attribute makes the code messy and using a class will not survive
copy-paste.
Chris

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Andrew W. Hagen]

Ian Hickson wrote:

"I don't really understand what problem this is solving. . . ."

That was interesting about the history of the cite element.

The import of my proposed change is that it would make the cite element
much more useful than it would be than if it were limited to titles.

For example, take a page listing numerous famous quotations. Below might be
one of them:

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal
that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what
they ought to be.  -- William Hazlitt

That works well, yet that would be technically against what the spec
in its current form allows.

A second example. Let's say a web page is to list a citation of a work.

This would be the citation, marked up according to the current HTML spec.

Hawking, Stephen.A Brief History of Time. Bantam: New York.
1988.

Most of the citation is not in the cite element.

The following should be an option for web authors.

Hawking, Stephen.A Brief History of Time. Bantam: New York.
1988.

That encases the entire citation in a cite element. The web author can re-style 
the cite
element as desired.

Cite should be available for untitled works. For example:

Rock critics have universally praisedthe 
untitled fourth
album  by Led Zeppelin.

While people aren't usually typographically marked up, they are cited.

The change would allow things other than titles to be placed into the cite 
element.
That would make cite much more useful.

Andrew Hagen
contact2...@awhlink.com

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Henri Sivonen]

On Jun 5, 2009, at 10:53, Ian Hickson wrote:


HTML4 actually defined  more like what you describe above; we
changed it to be a "title of work" element rather than a "citation"
element because that's actually how people were using it.



Furthermode, according to a co-author of HTML 2.0, it was meant for  
titles of works:

http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/html-wg/20070402#l-333

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivo...@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote:
>
> The cite element should be slightly changed. Under this proposal, the 
> cite element should be used only for titles of works, but may be used 
> for other things that web authors may wish to cite. This conforms with 
> how the cite element is used in practice.
> 
> In the current HTML 5 specification, the cite element can only represent 
> a title of a work. This has several negative implications. First, it 
> goes against what the word "cite" means. The common English usage of the 
> word "cite" includes making reference to non-titular authorities. For 
> example, a writer may cite Aristotle. See 
> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cite
> 
> Furthermore, the current restriction makes the cite element useless for 
> works which do not have a title. See a list of such works at 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untitled
> 
> Trying to enforce a "titles-only" rule for the cite element is 
> impossible. The best that can be done is for small bands of advocates to 
> ringingly criticize any web author who breaks the rule. That is herding 
> cats. It is not as if browsers will refuse to render  style="font-style: normal">Lincoln or that validators can 
> distinguish that from Gore Vidal's Lincoln (a historical 
> novel). The restrictive rule cannot be enforced.
> 
> Finally, HTML 5 has a broad definition for some elements, such as kbd. 
> The kbd element can represent any form of user input, even if it is not 
> made with a keyboard. In current-work, one example is given of 
> Shift+F3 for Shift+F3, even though in 
> that keyboard chord, the user would not actually input the "+" character 
> on the keyboard. It is so broadly defined that 
> Shift+F3 would also be valid. Some elements, like 
> kbd, are very broad.
> 
> Logical consistency cannot be perfectly maintained when specifying the 
> next version of HTML, but it should be a goal, and we ought to regret a 
> logical inconsistency between the cite element and elements like kbd. 
> One is narrow. The other is broad. Broadening the definition of cite 
> will not cause harm. It would only allow web authors to fully embrace 
> the cite element.
> 
> This solution is workable. The cite element's default style is italics 
> in display mode, and this proposal would not change that. If a web 
> author writes: Aristotle, the web author can live with it 
> or re-style the cite element as desired.
> 
> To conclude, slightly broadening the cite element would improve HTML.

I don't really understand what problem this is solving.

HTML4 actually defined  more like what you describe above; we 
changed it to be a "title of work" element rather than a "citation" 
element because that's actually how people were using it.

I don't think it makes sense to use the  element to refer to people, 
because typographically people aren't generally marked up anyway. I don't 
really see how you'd use it to refer to untitled works.

Thus, I don't really think it makes sense to make the change you propose.

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

Rendering the name "Aristotle" in italic by itself, if not used for
emphasis, indicates that the name is used in an oblique, indirect way,
perhaps referring to a fictitious person or a nickname, the person referred
to as "Aristotle" by a 3rd party.  Please do not ask me why this is so; I
shall not be able to give a definitive answer.  You may disagree, of course.
I never said that titles MUST be rendered in an italic style.  All I said is
that, in the context where scholarly style guides prescribe normal style,
the surprise factor of the user agent rendering it in italic style instead
is negligible.  OTOH, the surprise factor of the user agent rendering the
*author* in italic style is unacceptable.  I fully agree that this is an
unfortunate circumstance.
IMHO,
Chris

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Kristof Zelechovski
 wrote:
> The level of surprise of an article cited as a book is far smaller than a
> real author looking like a fictitious person, as in the default rendering of
>
>        Aristotle said.

How does this make Aristotle look like a fictitious person? I'm afraid
I don't follow how  suggests this.


> Not everybody is an expert in scholarly style guides but most readers feel
> the difference between direct speech and indirect speech.

This isn't about expertise in scholarly style guides, it's about the
silliness of limiting what  encompasses in the specification
merely because the typical default text rendering is italic. Such an
approach falls into the trap of using HTML elements based on their
presentation, not their semantics. My reference to scholarly style
guides was to point out that in various circles that have thought
about it, there is some consensus that not all titles are italicized.
It follows that if  is limited to titles because by default it
italicizes titles, you run into a logical trap for having relied on
the presentation of  (possibly to the detriment of its
semantics): How do you cite a title that requires non-italic
characters if italicization is integral to the  element? The
obvious answer is to use CSS to remove the italics, but then italics
are no longer an essential part of the  element, which leads me
to wonder why it would need to be limited to titles in the first
place. (I should also point out that Lynx doesn't italicize  by
default; nor do screenreaders, as far as I can tell.)

Moreover, at no point did I mention anything about direct and indirect
speech. That's another subject entirely. Perhaps the  element
has something to do with these modes of discourse in relation to using
, , and in-text paraphrase, but again my main point of
contention is that  is the most appropriate element for a
variety of semantic uses beyond wrapping a title in an element.


> You can, of course, say
>        It was not Plato, it was Aristotle!
> but this kind of emphasis is rarely needed and the interpretation of the
> rendering is obvious from the context in this case.

I don't see how the  element is relevant to your example. You're
emphasizing their names. And if this is indeed part of an argument
about which philosopher said that famous quote, there's nothing that
prevents you from wrapping multiple elements around the correct name.
So, in your example you could write Aristotle.


> I contend that citing articles from periodicals is not well supported,
> starting with the problem of lack of support in the NID urn:ISSN.

That's beyond the scope of this discussion, but there's nothing that
says those titles can't be wrapped in . (The rest is probably
better left to the heated microformats/RFDa/microdata debates. :)


> formal citations are not inserted into running text, which is what the CITE
> element in principle is for.  They are set aside as footnotes or endnotes in
> order to keep the text readable.  There is nothing wrong with the default
> rendering of the article title in running text where symbolic bibliography
> references are not used, e.g. because the text is for the average reader.

I'm not talking about bibliographic information or a list of works
cited, although marking them up properly is relevant to this
discussion. And I should point out that the MLA, APA, AP, and Chicago
style guides aren't exclusively about bibliography. They also
recommend how best to discuss articles, books, and other texts within
the context of your writing itself. I find it hard to believe that
you've never run across an article (or other non-italicized) title in
the context of regular text. For example:

Say, have you read "Palm Pre, Elegant Contender," David Pogue's new
review in the New York Times?

I defy you to find anyone who would expect the article title (in
quotes) to be italicized in the above sentence, but there are (I
believe) three places where  could be used justifiably.

Again, my point is that one shouldn't rely on default HTML rendering
to justify certain uses of an element. To do so can diminish the
semantics of the element in discussion and in cases like 
actually makes the too-limited scope even narrower. (To reiterate, if
italics are an essential component of , and  is used
exclusively to mark up titles, you can't appropriately use  with
every title, which cripples even that limited use.)

Erik

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

The level of surprise of an article cited as a book is far smaller than a
real author looking like a fictitious person, as in the default rendering of

Aristotle said.
Not everybody is an expert in scholarly style guides but most readers feel
the difference between direct speech and indirect speech.
You can, of course, say 
It was not Plato, it was Aristotle!
but this kind of emphasis is rarely needed and the interpretation of the
rendering is obvious from the context in this case.
I contend that citing articles from periodicals is not well supported,
starting with the problem of lack of support in the NID urn:ISSN.  However,
formal citations are not inserted into running text, which is what the CITE
element in principle is for.  They are set aside as footnotes or endnotes in
order to keep the text readable.  There is nothing wrong with the default
rendering of the article title in running text where symbolic bibliography
references are not used, e.g. because the text is for the average reader.
IMHO,
Chris

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Erik Vorhes]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:13 AM, Kristof Zelechovski
 wrote:
> The HTML is required to produce a meaningful rendering without CSS.  The
> level of reader surprise at the default rendering of
>        Aristotle said
> is high and such markup should be verbally deprecated.  (I agree that it
> cannot be technically invalid, of course.)
>

If I'm reading your message correctly, you assert that the spec's
documentation of semantic uses for  must be limited because of
how browsers render text within  by default.

But the argument in favor of limiting  in the spec. to titles
becomes almost immediately problematic. According to many scholarly
style guides (e.g., APA, MLA, and Chicago), default browser styles
properly italicize Crime and Punishment, but they would
improperly italicize the title to an article in a periodical.
Logically, then, if we are to use default styling as a baseline for
the usage of , the spec. would need to identify which kinds of
titles are appropriate to wrap within that element.

In addition, I'm skeptical about how much users are surprised when
they encounter italicized text. Visually, at least, by default 
renders no differently from , so it's not as if italicization is
an issue in itself; and judging my some of the seemingly random uses
of  in the wild, I doubt this is as big an issue as you suggest.

So count me as seconding Andrew Hagen's suggestions regarding .
It's too semantically useful an element to preemptively limit its use
only to titles.

Erik Vorhes

Re: [whatwg] the cite element

[Kristof Zelechovski]

The HTML is required to produce a meaningful rendering without CSS.  The
level of reader surprise at the default rendering of 
Aristotle said 
is high and such markup should be verbally deprecated.  (I agree that it
cannot be technically invalid, of course.)
IMHO,
Chris