Nested <q>'s (was Re: ACTION re: HTML 3: Too many tags!)

Gerald Oskoboiny (gerald@cs.ualberta.ca)
Thu, 27 Jul 95 14:31:41 EDT

James K. Tauber writes:

> On Thu, 27 Jul 1995, Steve Graham wrote:
> > How might <q> be applied where sub-quotations are involved? A trivial
> > English example:
> >
> > ``My father always said 'enough' when eating too much,'' replied the man.
> >
> > Might there not be grounds for <q1>, <q2> as in:
> >
> > <q1>`My father always said <q2>enough</q2> when eating too much,</q1>
> > replied the man.
>
> Depends if you want to put the burden on the encoder or the browsers. The
> above puts it on the former. Allowing for nested <q>'s (which in my
> opinion is preferrable) makes life a little harder for the browser but
> removes the burden away from the person doing the markup.

I think <q> should definitely be nestable. Something just doesn't seem
right with <q1> and <q2>: why is it limited to two levels? Unless there's
some rule in most languages to the effect of "never use more than two
levels of quotation", a three-level quotation is possible:

<q1>My father said <q2>I've had just about enough of that <q3>food</q3>
to last me a lifetime</q2> as we left the Taco Bell,</q1> replied the man.

Well, maybe that's a little contrived. But what if we're quoting already-
quoted text?

<p>Your search produced the following results:

<ul>
<li>line 12: <q>He said, <q>I've had enough of that <q>food</q></q>.</q>
</ul>

Gerald

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny  <gerald@cs.ualberta.ca>  http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/