Blockquote tags

Mon Mar 23 18:18:43 EST 1998

Re:	Blockquotes in REC-html40-971218 (HTML 4.0 Specification,
	Recommendation 18-Dec-1997,
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218
	Section 9.2.2 "Quotations: The BLOCKQUOTE and Q elements"

Thomas Dowling wrote:
> You're making a common but unfounded assumption.  Most of the browsers
> you're familiar with display BLOCKQUOTE as though it were an indented
> paragraph.  That does not mean that all browsers will do this, nor that
this
> is BLOCKQUOTE's purpose.

Every single browser I've worked with (IEXP, NNav, Lynx, Mosaic,
Chameleon)
has rendered blockquotes as I previously described, but I do agree there
are
likely browsers (new and old) out there that would render those pages
differently.  As to "purpose," we all know there is a difference
"recommendation"
and actual implementation.  Blockquote simply works--or it should,
according to
the W3C document:

	"Visual user agents generally render BLOCKQUOTE as an
	indented block." (Section 9.2.2)

Like you, I alluded to style sheets, but my concern is
reverse-compatibility.
I work with a LOT of people who use Lynx (and will be using it for quite
some time).  So style sheets, while nice, are only supported by the
latest
browsers.

As for a search engine blocking any text encased in blockquotes, yes that
too is a possibility.  That would be foolish, but that's possible.  (Why
not
block all text in < tables > < hXs > and inline < scripts >?)

Re:	"you've tagged those words as coming from some other source,
	so they must not really be part of your content, right?" (TD)

That would be quite an assumption.  E.g. A newsletter couldn't contain
quotes from its own members or president?  That would be a foolish
algorithm, botwise.  I think a quick search using AltaVista reveals many
pages indexed with scripts, blockquotes, tables and all.  Let's not
forget
Metadata statements, which would end this specific argument.

Re:	"And to top it all off, you don't know how much of an indent
	you're creating.  Even among browsers that render
	BLOCKQUOTE the way you expect, you can't control the
	size of the indent." (TD)

That's true with every other aspect of graphical browsers too:  users
can say "use my colors/override document's colors," change fonts, font
sizes, rescale windows to make words and graphics wrap where coders
did not intend them too.  That phenomenon goes on and on.  We only
have relative control over the way documents render.  There's also
graphic cards, resolution settings and monitors to consider in this case.
When I design pages, I examine them in 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768.
The majority of PC/VGA users view them in 640x480.  God knows
what our Apple, Unix/Linux, Windows CE or Sun colleagues are
seeing--or can see.  Style sheets will not end all visual concerns
either.
As long as browsers are customizable there will be disparities between
what you see and what others get.

Re:	"Some of you probably know where I'm going with this:
	stylesheets.  They're the right tool for the job for two main
	reasons: they let you address the structure of your document
	honestly--if something really is a paragraph, you can mark it
	up with P--and they let you address the presentation of you
	document much more flexibly than hacks like BLOCKQUOTE,
	nested DL's, UL's with no LI's, etc.  They will not affect
	browsers that don't support them, and with a small bit of care
	they won't even harm browsers which claim to support them
	but only support a botched subset of the specification." (TD)

They're the wrong tool (presently) for one reason:  Not all browsers
support them.  How many typical library web pages demand style sheets
anyway?  The < p > is elemental to HTML, and nesting DLs and ULs is
certainly no "hack."  What I and many others wish is that there was a
simple indentation element from the beginning.  Until the majority of
users upgrade to the latest browsers, style sheets will not be the final
or
preferred answer to our typesetting woes.  The standards don't sit
still long enough for anything standardized to occur.

Re:	<html><head><title>A Title</title><style
type="text/css"><!--.indented { 
	margin-left: 8%; margin-right: 8%}--></style></head><body><div
	class="indented"><h1>Hello</h1>..</div></body></html>(TD)

Simply because this does not render in Lynx I would not use it.  And just
look at all the extra bytes needed simply to perform an indentation. 
Again,
I believe there should be a better way.

The W3C recommendation also indicates the following:

	However, as some authors have used BLOCKQUOTE merely
	as a mechanism to indent text, in order to preserve the intention
	of the authors, user agents should not insert quotation marks in
	the default style.

	The usage of BLOCKQUOTE to indent text is deprecated in
	favor of style sheets.

		from Section 9.2.2 "Quotations: The BLOCKQUOTE
		and Q elements"

Obviously they are quite aware of this technique and do not advise
against it, but the last line obviously illustrates where they're
leaning:
style sheets.  As browsers will, by sheer necessity, need to be
backwardly compatible with older HTML tags and proprietary tags
(e.g. < blink >), blockquote will likely be supported for quite a while.
The safest bet, coding wise, is to try to go as far as one can without
the
proprietary and upper HTML commands.  HTML on its own is
incredibly versatile, as is its parent SGML.  Many improvements are
left to be made.  I would propose a simple addition to the < p > tag: 
indent = first | all, or even align = indentfirst | indentall (to be
consistent
with the alignment tag ).  Anything would be better than nothing,
particularly with something so elemental to human writing.

Thank you for bringing your point of view to this subject.

Yours,
Robert J. Tiess
rjtiess at juno.com

-

_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]