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Bug 25259 - Conversations: recommend to use 'cite' instead of 'span'/'b'
Summary: Conversations: recommend to use 'cite' instead of 'span'/'b'
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 editorial
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: steve faulkner
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2014-04-04 13:22 UTC by Stefan Götz
Modified: 2015-06-17 05:24 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

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Attachments

Description Stefan Götz 2014-04-04 13:22:53 UTC 
The section "Conversations" [1] recommends to use 'span' or 'b' "to mark the speaker for styling purposes".

But as 'cite' [2] now [3] can also be used for author names, shouldn’t we recommend to use 'cite' for the speaker name? (This would be similar to the current example for comments in a blog.)

[1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/common-idioms.html#conversations
[2] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/text-level-semantics.html#the-cite-element
[3] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23008
Comment 1 Michael[tm] Smith 2015-06-17 05:24:18 UTC 
The spec says "The cite element represents a reference to a creative work." and "A citation is not a quote.", and a conversation is not a creative work, and the names shown in a record of a conversation are not references to creative works. (Also the spec mentions the <span> and <b> elements only in the context of saying, "Authors who need to mark the speaker for *styling purposes* are encouraged to use span or b." So there it's only suggesting a mechanism for aiding a presentation hook, not a means to marking the names up any more semantically than that.