Re: For review: 1 new and 3 updated articles about language declarations in HTML

Gunnar Bittersmann, Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:28:05 +0200:
> Leif Halvard Silli scripsit on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:33:20 +0100
>> Is the '>  *' necessary?
  [ … snip … ]
> The '>' combinator is necessary, [ … snip … ] because both selectors
> ':lang(de) *' and ':lang(fr) *' would match and of various selectors
> of the same specifity the last one wins.

Good point.

> However,[ … snip … ] IMHO the quotation marks belong to the text, e.g.
>
> <p lang="de" xml:lang="de">Martin Luther King sagte: „<q lang="en"
> xml:lang="en">I have a dream!</q>“</p>
>
> and should not be generated with CSS.
>
> Bear also in mind that CSS-generated quotaion marks get lost when
> text is copied from a web page and pasted elsewhere.

+1 It would, in fact, makes sense if the QA article *also* demonstrated
where to place quotes *manually*.

> The concept of CSS-generated quotaion marks would fail at all for
> some languages such as Russian:
  [ … snip … ]
> «Заяц! — Волк кричал. — Ну, погоди!»
>
> would be correct punctuation, AFAIS from
> http://www.gramota.ru/spravka/rules/?rub=znapr

Hm. What you bring in here, is the *dialogue* mark-up issue and not the
quotation mark-upiss. Because, it would *not* be correct *markup* to do
this:

   «<q>Заяц!</q> — Волк кричал. — <q>Ну, погоди!</q>»

The HTML working group has not really agreed about how to mark up human
dialog with HTML5. But one suggestion from *HTML4* is to use the <dl>
element. One could then use <dt> for "meta data", such as "he said" -
and this *could* allow the  "—" to be omitted, and handle it via CSS
instead:

<dl lang="ru" class="dialogue-inside-another-run-of-text" >
   <dd>Заяц!</dd>
   <dt class="inline">Волк кричал.</dt>
   <dd>Ну, погоди!</dd>
</dl>

Though, this text is not a dialogue like you would find it in a play,
for instance. If it had ben a play, then the narrator would also have a
role - a place in the dialogue:

<dl lang=ru >
   <dt lang=en >   Wolf   </dt><dd>Заяц!</dd>
   <dt lang=en > Narrator </dt><dd>Волк кричал.</dd>
   <dt lang=en >   Wolf   </dt><dd>Ну, погоди!</dd>
</dl>

And may be it would be best approach, also in your example - though of
course the <dt> would have to be hidden -  or deleted:

<dl lang=ru >
   <dd class=wolf     >Заяц!</dd>
   <dd class=narrator >Волк кричал.</dd>
   <dd class=wolf     >Ну, погоди!</dd>
</dl>

At any rate: Not every instance of « » is a quotation. To use <q> in
order to insert «» would be to misuse it for styling purposes.
--
Leif H Silli