RE: Is <q> useful? [was Expected behaviour of quotation marks]

You can override quote characters for the q element with the quotes property. (When browsers support the property)
This can be configured by language if needed.

q {
    quotes: "«" "»";
}

Did I mistake your point?

Tex

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan@ccil.org] On Behalf Of John Cowan
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2016 6:36 AM
To: ishida@w3.org
Cc: Tex Texin; 'Dave Cramer'; 'W3C Digital Publishing IG'; 'www International'
Subject: Re: Is <q> useful? [was Expected behaviour of quotation marks]

ishida@w3.org scripsit:

> if the quotes had been semantically identified using q elements, it 
> would be trivial to do so.

I agree that it would be good to have a way to semantically identify quotations in running text.  It's the fact that browsers supply quotation marks around them that's problematic.  There seems to be no way to override what question marks are provided.

Playing with Chrome, I find that "en-us" produces ASCII double quotes, whereas "en-gb" produces curly double quotes.  Arguably both of these are wrong, but as an author, what am I supposed to do?  
To get the results I think are correct, I have to forgo the q element.

This could be repaired by providing a new element, perhaps named "quote", which also indicates a quotation but doesn't supply any marks.  Alternatively, the q element could accept attributes specifying the start and end quotes.

> if, instead, i just inserted the quotation inside a q element, i 
> should be able to rely on the browser to apply some sensible default

Except that that appears not to be the case.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan@ccil.org
I could dance with you till the cows come home.  On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows when you come home.
        --Rufus T. Firefly

Received on Friday, 8 April 2016 18:13:41 UTC