Re: ISSUE-48 (marks-content-markup-attribute): 'marks' content markup attribute for Q (quotation) and BLOCKQUOTE [HTML 5 spec]

HTML Issue Tracking Issue Tracker wrote:
> For Q (quotation) and BLOCKQUOTE a 'marks' content markup attribute.
> Permits authors greater control over the separation of concerns of
> styling quotations and specifying the semantics of quotations within a
> document. Also allows authors to work around the current state of
> interoperability across popular UAs.
> 
> for more detailed discussion, please consult the wiki page at: 
> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/AddedAttributeQuotationMarks

The use-case here is authors wanting to mark up quotes.  There are two 
plausible ways of implementing it: just choose one and be done with it. 
  Sure, <q> has interoperability issues, so pressure IE to fix it or the 
other browsers to stop using quotes; don't invent a new attribute to 
permanently embed this weird situation in the specification.  (Just 
because other weird things are in now mandated by the spec doesn't mean 
that we should keep on adding weird things to that list.)

Whilst I appreciate that hypothetically it would be nice for some people 
to specify which way they want things, in practice it won't be a) useful 
or b) even make a difference to the vast majority of authors, so 
increasing implementation complexity for such a tiny gain seems, well, 
silly.  (See "Solve Real Problems".)

-- 
Andrew Sidwell

Received on Thursday, 29 May 2008 15:49:04 UTC