This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 23314 - Use of <cite> in <blockquote> has conflicting semantics
Summary: Use of <cite> in <blockquote> has conflicting semantics
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: WHATWG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: Unsorted
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: contributor
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 23315 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 23175
Blocks:
  Show dependency tree / graph
 
Reported: 2013-09-21 10:45 UTC by Sam Ruby
Modified: 2013-09-23 23:28 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description Sam Ruby 2013-09-21 10:45:52 UTC 
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #23175 +++

The recent changes in the definitions of <cite> and <blockquote> have been a massive improvement. However, consider the following example:

  <blockquote>
    Who is your favourite doctor (in <cite>Doctor Who</cite>)?
    - <cite>John Smith</cite>
  </blockquote>

We can see that, in that blockquote, there are two different uses for <cite>. The first represents the title of a work, and the second represents the source of the quote. Therefore, there is no semantic way to differentiate between the former and latter meaning.

Therefore, I'd like to propose that it should be a requirement for authors to specify the source of a quote inside the <footer> element; rather than this just being optional.

Note that this is not a problem with inline quotes, because the <cite> would be outside the quote tags:

  <q>Who is your favourite doctor (in <cite>Doctor Who</cite>)?</q>
  - <cite>John Smith</cite>
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2013-09-23 15:52:48 UTC 
Putting the source of the quote inside the <blockquote> at all is non-conforming, so this is a non-issue. (Also, putting a name in <cite> is non-conforming.)

The way you distinguish between something that's in the quote and something that's outside the quote is by looking at whether the thing is in the <blockquote> or not. It's actually very simple. :-)
Comment 2 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2013-09-23 15:53:05 UTC 
*** Bug 23315 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Josh Tumath 2013-09-23 23:28:32 UTC 
(In reply to Ian 'Hixie' Hickson from comment #1)
> Putting the source of the quote inside the <blockquote> at all is
> non-conforming, so this is a non-issue. (Also, putting a name in <cite> is
> non-conforming.)
> 
> The way you distinguish between something that's in the quote and something
> that's outside the quote is by looking at whether the thing is in the
> <blockquote> or not. It's actually very simple. :-)

This, to me, is the solution I prefer. However, we now have two specs giving contradictory definitions. Which one should I conform to?