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Bug 18919 - Encouraged cite attribute behavior is unlikely to be implemented and so should be dropped
Summary: Encouraged cite attribute behavior is unlikely to be implemented and so shoul...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: WHATWG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: Unsorted
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: contributor
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Reported: 2012-09-19 16:49 UTC by Edward O'Connor
Modified: 2012-11-25 06:03 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

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Description Edward O'Connor 2012-09-19 16:49:48 UTC
+++ 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.
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2012-11-25 06:02:33 UTC
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.
Comment 2 contributor 2012-11-25 06:03:32 UTC
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