Ian Hickson wrote:
On Fri, 4 Sep 2009, Ryan Roberts wrote:
Ian Hickson wrote:
On Fri, 4 Sep 2009, Ryan Roberts wrote:
If you want quote marks in the source, use quote marks in the
source, and don't use<q>.
If you want quote marks added automatically, use<q>.
This makes little sense. What you're saying is<q> has no semantic
purpose anymore, it's there for presentation (see your further
down).
I'm not sure what you mean by "semantic purpose". In what sense is all
of HTML not just "there for presentation"?
The whole point of HTML is to be a media-independent, platform-
independent, stylable documenta and application language. Presentation
(on multiple media, devices, etc) is the most important use case.
Maybe I'm not explaining myself properly, I'm just a web designer and
nobody fancy. I believed many if not most elements such as<q>, were
there to describe the content. I see now this isn't the case with<q>,
but it's only really like that because it's broken and nobody wants to
fix it.
<q> does describe contents -- it means "this is a quote, so add quote
marks". Just like<p> means "this is a paragraph, so add a line break
before and after". Or in different media, "This is a quote, so use a
slightly different voice" and "This is a paragraph, so pause before and
after". Elements in HTML are media-independent presentation hooks.
Right, HTML is tied much closer to the browser than I thought it was.
Even if that doesn't make sense to you thanks for the feedback, I think
I'm understanding it better.
It would be stupid of us to try to change this now given that all
four major browsers ship with a<q> that inserts quote marks. This
was discussed in depth last year, and the spec was changed (from
not inserting quotes to inserting quotes) after it was concluded
that swimming against the browser vendors here was futile.
Then hand the spec over to them.
In what sense have we not handed the spec over to them? Browser
vendors, as the most high-profile implementors of the spec, have full
control over what ends up being implemented. I'm not going to make the
spec say somethin they won't do; that would just turn the spec into an
especially dry form of science fiction.
I understand that they have final say over what goes in their browsers,
but I can't say I like them having final say over the HTML5 spec itself.
What's the point in the HTML5 spec describing something that isn't what
the browsers do?
To create a standard they all aim for... no clearly this isn't the case.
At this point, the<q> element's purpose is to enable CSS-based
quotation mark injection. If you don't want that, then don't
use<q>.
So at this point how do you mark up an inline quote?
One of the following:
<p>Ryan asked "So at this point how do you mark up an inline
quote?"</p>
<p>Ryan asked<q>So at this point how do you mark up an inline
quote?</q></p>
In that case why not have<p> auto inert a period then we could have the
following:
Ryan doesn't like what he's hearing.
<p>Ryan doesn't like what he's hearing</p>
We do -- well, not periods, but line breaks.<p> inserts line breaks,
which you can override from the CSS, just like<q> inserts quotes, which
you can override from the CSS.
--
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