Dear WHATWG list participants, Forgive me if this conversation has been had before; I've just recently joined the list.
Is there any value in adding an "href" or "uri" or similar attribute to the <cite> element to indicate a location for a work (or information about the work) or, in the case of a URI, an indicator that can be used as a reference programmatically? <q> has a "cite" attribute, so it seems to me that if we have a place to link to further information in <q> it makes sense to do so in <cite>. After all, whether an author quotes from a reference (<q>) or merely discusses it without quoting (<cite>), both of these would end up in a works cited in a traditional paper. Therefore, I think both should link (or refer) to somewhere. If it were a URI (and therefore not necessarily retrievable), it would help in cases where the same work gets referenced in slightly different ways: <p>As Ashley Crandall Amos says in <cite uri="http://example.com/books/crandall/linguisticmeans";>Linguistic Means of Determining the Dates of Old English Literary Texts</cite> ... Amos also mentions in <cite uri="http://example.com/books/crandall/linguisticmeans";>Linguistic Means</cite></p> ✍ Best, Grant Simpson ¶ Senior Analyst/Programmer, Office of the Registrar ¶ Doctoral Student, Department of English ¶ Representative, IU Bloomington Professional Council Indiana University Bloomington
