4.7.3 Attributes common to ins and del elements

The cite attribute may be used to specify the address of a document that explains the change. When that document is long, for instance the minutes of a meeting, authors are encouraged to include a fragment identifier pointing to the specific part of that document that discusses the change.

If the cite attribute is present, it must be a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces that explains the change. To obtain the corresponding citation link, the value of the attribute must be resolved relative to the element. User agents should allow users to follow such citation links.

The datetime attribute may be used to specify the time and date of the change.

If present, the datetime attribute's value must be a valid date string with optional time.

User agents must parse the datetime attribute according to the parse a date or time string algorithm. If that doesn't return a date or a global date and time, then the modification has no associated timestamp (the value is non-conforming; it is not a valid date string with optional time). Otherwise, the modification is marked as having been made at the given date or global date and time. If the given value is a global date and time then user agents should use the associated time-zone offset information to determine which time zone to present the given datetime in.

The ins and del elements must implement the HTMLModElement interface:

interface HTMLModElement : HTMLElement {
           attribute DOMString cite;
           attribute DOMString dateTime;
};

The cite IDL attribute must reflect the element's cite content attribute. The dateTime IDL attribute must reflect the element's datetime content attribute.