From rob at robburns.com Sun Sep 13 22:34:53 2009
From: rob at robburns.com (Robert J Burns)
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:34:53 -0500
Subject: [html4all] a 'who' element
Message-ID: <4B0EE60A-3F97-4373-8146-E5ACFADCA9E5@robburns.com>
Hi Leif,
I saw your thread about the 'cite' and 'who' elements[1]. I
particularly like the 'who' suggestion. In crafting HTML 4.1 I was
working to disentangle citation (of a work) from attribution (to an
person or other entity). However the terms attribution and attribute
are too overloaded in English. I think a 'who' element would fit the
bill nicely. I also had suggested a 'pn' element for proper nouns or
personal nouns.
Another important thing to consider in your suggestion is that we have
attributes as well as elements. And I think the 'cite' attribute has
got to be universalized (and maybe a universal 'who' attribute too).
In this way a 'cite' attribute can be added to any element and the
element and all its descendants (until overridden) are marked up as a
citation of the URI referenced in the 'cite' attribute.
Similarly a 'who' attribute could serve as a way to attribute ideas to
a person. These are two different functions. A person may have said
something (like Truman in your example), but that is not the same
thing as a citation that allows a reader to track down and verify the
idea or quotation. The citation may be Truman (in a private
conversation) but that is still distinct from the attribution
to Truman. So I think these two functions need to be disentangled, but
as usual the Ian Hickson approach is simply to lop off a necessary
function to ?simplify? things. Leaving authors to misuse and abuse
other mechanisms for the fundamental functionality they need from a
markup language.
Take care,
Rob
[1]: