In http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2010-March/025549.html
with a subject of Element-related feedback, Ian Hixie quoted me and
asked:
On Fri, 1 Jan 2010, Jim Jewett wrote:
Evil Lawyer: So, when did you stop beating your wife?
Defendant: Never!
Evil Lawyer and Defendant aren't pronounced. Their meanings (and
silence) are deduced from English conventions about punctuation. I
would prefer a semantic tag.
Hixie:
Why? What problem would a semantic tag solve? The default styling here
seems to not need any particular element; the above is perfectly
understandable as is as far as I can tell.
For written output, yes, the convention works.
Ideally, a screen reader should *not* read the attribution labels --
but it should use them to switch voices.
I'm expecting [scripts] to do something like increase the font size or
change the background for lines *I* have to memorize for *my* character
[based on the semantic marked in the page identifying the character], or
for cue lines that I have to recognize.
Are there any examples of this in the wild? Since this is technically
possible today, if it's a use case important enough that we should address
it, it should be easy enough to find examples of this.
I'm very reluctant to provide features for hypothetical problems that
don't stem from a real market need. (If we start solving such problems, we
would fast find ourselves on the path to feature bloat.)
I haven't acted much since finding the internet. I have seen plenty
of printed scripts in which this was done manually with a highlighter
for rehearsals. I would expect today's equivalent to be done at time
of printing, rather than by a helpful web site.
So the need is there; the question is whether the need is too
specialized (like the various poetry elements) ... if the only use
were scripts, I would say that it was too specialized, but I would
also use it for photo credits (the italicized captions), etc. Whether
that then makes it too much of a catchall element -- maybe.
You're still not saying why you want this element. What would attrib
be good for? What UI would it trigger? How would users or authors
benefit?
(Per above, the UI would change voices in a screen reader, and could
be used as a hook for user style sheets in scripts.)
I would expect it to be used in License checkers that some organizations
would deploy to ensure they aren't violating copyright.
Wouldn't the Work microdata vocabulary be a better solution to this
problem?
Possibly. I find that more complicated, but the precision may be
worth the complication.
I would expect it to be used by some scrapers looking for stock photos.
I'm not sure what you mean. Wouldn't fingerprinting the photos be more
effective?
I was thinking of scrapers acting on behalf of a consumer --
collecting a bunch of photos that you would be allowed to use.
I would expect it to be used with custom CSS for some users, who are
really looking for a model or photographer rather than an existing
photograph.
I don't understand this case. Can you elaborate? Maybe an example of this
use in the wild would help.
Some of the original cite examples from the wild were really credits
-- they listed the photographer and the model. Plenty of model and
photographer websites are largely devoted to finding each other; I
assume that this is because photographers are looking to find (and
then contact) models with a particular look, while models are looking
to be photographed by photographers skilled in a certain style.
Again, this seems like a fairly specialized need, but I've seen in on
several sites, and it again gets met by an attribution or credits
element.
[On why cite should really be read as title_of_work, but still
called cite for historical reasons]
Why would it be wrong to have an element to style titles [for titles
of works]?
Turning around your favorite question, what is the semantic value?
It provides a way to have appropriate default styling (italics, in the
visual medium) for a typographic feature that is widely used, while
allowing it to be easily restyled independent of other uses of italics.
This is the same benefit em, strong, mark, etc, have.
I think title of work is itself a fairly rare case. Normally, it is
enough to just put it in quotes or italics. The times when you care
that it is a title aren't really more common than the times that you
care about attribution.
-jJ
