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+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #18915 +++ The Rendering section, in subsection Links, Forms and Navigation <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/rendering.html#links,-forms,-and-navigation> says: "User agents are expected to allow users to navigate browsing contexts to the resources indicated by the cite attributes on q, blockquote, ins, and del elements." As far as I can tell, mainstream UAs do not implement this, and I don't know of any planning to offer such behavior. Making these elements act as hyperlinks directly is likely to be incompatible with existing content, a context menu item is too obscure to be worth it, and out-of-line UI is likely not to merit space in the UI chrome. "expected" statements in the Rendering section are MUST-level conformance criteria for the "Visual user agents that support the suggested default rendering" conformance class: <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/infrastructure.html#conformance-classes> Since this requirement is unlikely to be implemented, it should be dropped. Otherwise it is likely to be dropped in CR anyway.
I considered dropping cite="" and datetime="" entirely, and actually did do that edit, but then I noticed that the spec uses cite="" and it seems both useful and harmless, so in the end I left them in. But the UI aspects are demoted to mere "may"s at this point.
Checked in as WHATWG revision r7546. Check-in comment: You had nearly a decade to make people love you, cite='', but you failed. So you're getting demoted to mere hidden metadata status, the last step before Tantek argues you into obsolescence. http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=7545&to=7546