A user account is required in order to edit this wiki, but we've had to disable public user registrations due to spam.

To request an account, ask an autoconfirmed user on Chat (such as one of these permanent autoconfirmed members).

Cite element

From WHATWG Wiki
Revision as of 22:18, 13 August 2010 by Tantek (talk | contribs) (→‎Documentation: add counter-argument section, DanC quote from IRC, and follow-up)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Research, data, use cases, issues, and enhancements related to the HTML5 cite element.

Speaker

The cite element has been used (and recommended to be used) to refer to speakers in a conversation, or individuals when quoting them, thus HTML5 should explicitly permit and encourage this use.

This section serves to document both uses in the wild, and long-standing recommendations/documentations thereof.

Examples in the Wild

Documentation

Counter-arguments

  • 2007-06-07 Dan Connolly, Editor of HTML 2.0, said in IRC that

    <cite> was supposed to capture the chicago-manual-of-style idiom for titles of works. I have lost track of what it means these days.

    • This may have been the original intent (original theoretical purity), however, based on the example in the HTML4 spec(s) and adoption by the web community over the past 10+ years (see above examples in the wild), it makes more sense to define the <cite> element per actual usage (preferring authors), rather than original intent (theoretical purity), per the HTML5 design principles. - Tantek 22:18, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
  • ...

Opinions

Opinions on whether HTML5 should explicitly permit and encourage use of the cite element to refer to speakers in a conversation, or individuals when quoting them:

articles

Articles supporting the use of the cite element for marking up speakers:

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about using the cite element for marking up speakers.

how do you connect the speaker cite to what was said

Question: How could we connect the speaker, CITE to what was said, Q, without nesting? Perhaps using FOR, as in form labels:

<cite for="good">Andy Mabbett</cite> said <q id="good">This is good</q>.

On the other hand, if we reverse that we could have a many-to-one relationship:

<cite id="andy">Andy Mabbett</cite> said <q for="andy">This is good</q> and later said <q for="andy">This is better</q>.</nowiki>

Answer: The existing 'cite' attribute on the <q> and <blockquote> elements can be used for this, in HTML4 and later:

<cite id="andy">Andy Mabbett</cite> said 
<q cite="#andy">This is good</q>
 and later said 
<q cite="#andy">This is better</q>.

related

references