Re: LYNX-DEV blockquote behavior

[Subir Grewal]

On Sat, 18 Jan 1997, Eli's redistribution point wrote:

:I started this discussion, and here's where I think I should jump back in.
:I agree that there is no precendent in typography for nested block quotes,
:and that perhaps thinking about HTML in terms of typography is what caused
:this oversight in lynx. I do think it should be supported.
:
:Here's why. HTML is not physical markup. HTML is not typography. HTML
:is a way of markuping up text in a logical way. Just because typography
:in the last five centuries has not found it necessary to nest quotes,
:it does not follow that nesting quotes is not appropriate ever. I

This is perhaps going off-topic for Lynx and maybe we could take it to
ciwah (where I've begun to take interest in this thread).  But, my
objection would center around the "uniqueness" of Usenet (and mailing
lists) in that they are a form of written discussion fora that are perhaps
completely unprecedented, at least in the form that quotation takes here.
The "you said" nature (along with the fact that it's really a debate
taking place in discrete time) of Usenet makees it necessary to quote and
respond directly to particular sections of a previous comment.  I think
the convention of appending one character to quoted text admirably serves
our purpose in these fora.  I don't think indenting would be efficient.
In fact, when people have used mailers/newsreaders that do indent
quoted text, I've had occassion to remark at my strange dislike of this
behaviour.

But the web is not a discussion forum.  Certainly it is taking the word
where it hasn't been, and the sort of decorum one expects to see in
published material cannot be asked of material on the Web.  Nevertheless,
I cannot think of a situation where nested blockquotes are required in a
document that isn't simply a HTML 'translation' of a news/list article
(and in that case PRE works fine).  In other words, I can't come up with a
scenario where an author would want to use structural markup for nested
quotations which a reader would be comfortable with seeing as increasingly
intented.  Though the web is different, the readers are the same, and the
rendering conventions we rely on to make sense of document structure are
more often than not those we have used in our lives as readers of the
printed word.  Of course there is the separate question of whether
indenting will be more effective than appending a character, like most
news/mail readers, (and I believe Mosaic as well)?  As a 

address@hidden  +  Lynx 2.6  +  PGP  +  http://www.crl.com/~subir/
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
                -- Thomas Edison

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