On 11/20/2012 8:25 PM, Godmar Back wrote:
Could you elaborate on your belief that COinS is "actually illegal in
HTML5?" Why would that be so?
Yeah, thanks for calling me on that, I was wrong! Not sure where I got
that idea, but it does not seem to be illegal. (Did some earlier version
of HTML5 get rid of 'title attribute on every element'? Or was I just
confused?)
Perhaps what I was thinking of is that some people see an accessibility
issue in using the 'title' attribute for non-human-readable data, like
COinS does. As the title attribute theoretically provides extra
human-readable content that a user-agent can display in some cases, and
filling it with non-human-readable data may confuse people. I seem to
recall _someone_ complaining about a COinS title attribute on these
grounds in some app I develop, but I can't remember the details.
Here's others mentioning that potential problem:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat#Accessibility
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/06/removing_microformats_from_bbc.shtml
However, in practice, that seems to be a problem more likely, if at all,
with title attributes on <abbr> elements, not <span> elements like
COinS. If you google around, you find a lot of people complaining about
the reverse problem -- don't assume that adding a "title" attribute to
your <span> provides an accessible description (say, to visually
impaired users), because most assistive user-agents in fact ignore the
title attribute!
Still, it's kind of messy to use a title attribute for
non-human-readable purposes. And is a large part of the motivation for
HTML5 microdata.
- Godmar
On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <rochk...@jhu.edu> wrote:
It _IS_ an old unused metadata format that should be replaced by something
else (among other reasons because it's actually illegal in HTML5), but I'm
not sure there is a "something else" with the right balance of flexibility,
simplicity, and actual adoption by consuming software.
But COinS didn't have a whole lot of adoption by consuming software
either. Can you say what you think the COinS you've been adding are useful
for, what they are getting used for? And what sorts of 'citations' youw ere
adding them for? For my own curiosity, and because it might help answer if
there's another solution that would still meet those needs.
But if you want to keep using COinS -- creating a COinS generator like
OCLC's no longer existing one is a pretty easy thing to do, perhaps some
code4libber reading this will be persuaded to find the time to create one
for you and others. If you have a server that could host it, you could
offer that. :)
On 11/20/2012 4:47 PM, Bigwood, David wrote:
I've used the COinS Generator at OCLC for years. Now it is gone. Any
suggestions on how I can get an occasional COinS for use in our
bibliography? Do any of the citation managers generate COinS?
Or is this just an old unused metadata format that should be replaced by
something else?
Thanks,
Dave Bigwood
dbigw...@hou.usra.edu
Lunar and Planetary Institute
