Author tag (<author> or <au>)

[Shawn Lindsay]

Hi.

I'm trying to write a plugin for some blogging software (blosxom), and I
wanted to make use of the <au> aka <author> tag. Apparently that
element is in html 3.x, but not in the specs for html 4.x. I don't know
if it's deprecated, obsolete, or what, because I can't find any mention of
it.

If you'll pardon my newbieness here, what are the possible doctype
declarations necessary for a page with an <au> tag to validate?

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Shawn Lindsay <sl******@palouse.net> wrote:

I'm trying to write a plugin for some blogging software (blosxom),
and I wanted to make use of the <au> aka <author> tag.
What would its meaning be? In HTML, there's the <address> element,
which is defined as specifying contact information for the author of
the document or part of document. With a liberal, yet reasonable,
interpretation even the author's name can be regarded as contact
information. But beware that <address> is a block level element and has
some (slightly odd) default features (e.g., use of italics) on many
browsers.
Apparently that element is in html 3.x,
No, it is not. The only "html 3.x" ever approved is the HTML 3.2
specification. There was a HTML 3.0 draft - actually, an incomplete
draft - which is _still_ sometimes referred to as if it had been or
were a version of HTML, despite its having expired in 1995 and despite
its carrying the boilerplate statement
"This document is an Internet draft. - -
- - It is inappropriate to use Internet drafts as reference
material or to cite them as other than as 'work in progress'."

The HTML 3.0 draft contained an <au> element, as text level markup, and
as indicating "the name of an author", without saying whether that
would mean the HTML document's author or any author of any work.
but not in the specs for html 4.x.
Right.
I don't know if it's deprecated, obsolete, or what, because I can't
find any mention of it.
It's neither deprecated nor obsolete. It never existed.
If you'll pardon my newbieness here, what are the possible doctype
declarations necessary for a page with an <au> tag to validate?

You can take some published doctype and edit it by adding a declaration
like
<!ELEMENT au - - (%inline;)>
and modifying, for example, the definition of inline to allow an au
element.

Or you could even take the doctype in the HTML 3.0 draft,
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/html3.dtd

Whether this makes any sense is another question. Why would you want to
validate a document in the first place? Remember that validation _only_
means a process of testing whether a document's syntax complies with
the document type definition it purports to comply with.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Shawn Lindsay]

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 09:21:24 +0000, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Shawn Lindsay <sl******@palouse.net> wrote:

I'm trying to write a plugin for some blogging software (blosxom), and
I wanted to make use of the <au> aka <author> tag.

What would its meaning be?

<snip>
The meaning would be the name of an author. I'm trying to randomly select
a quote like from a fortune file and have it spit out something that
resembles an epigraph. It would be like:

<blockquote><cite>I hate quotations.</cite><br /><br /><br /><au
class="quote">--Ralph Waldo Emerson</au></blockquote>

I can style <au> with something like:

au.quote {float:right;white-space:nowrap;}

That works in mozilla and seemed useful and appropriate to me, but I
guess I'd better learn to use <span> or find some other means of doing the
same thing.

I'm concerned about validation because others might find the plugin useful
and they may care about validation. So I can't have an element that's not
in the specs. Your solution (<!ELEMENT au - - (%inline;)>) would involve
messing with people's head templates. Possible, but not the best way to
write the plugin.

I'd sort of hoped "transitional" or anything less than strict might cover
it, in which case I'd have just made a note of it. But I can see from
what you've told me, and after reviewing 3.2., that I was mistaken on
several counts. Thanks for clarifying things for me and answering my
question.

[Anne van Kesteren]

Shawn Lindsay wrote:

<blockquote><cite>I hate quotations.</cite><br /><br /><br /><au
class="quote">--Ralph Waldo Emerson</au></blockquote>

<blockquote><p>I hate quotations.</p></blockquote>
<p><cite>Ralph Waldo Emerson</cite></p>

cite:before{
content:"--";
}

Would be better IMO. Though I'm not quite sure about the P elements
around the CITE element yet.
--
Anne van Kesteren
<http://www.annevankesteren.nl/>

[Chris Morris]

Shawn Lindsay <sl******@palouse.net> writes:

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 09:21:24 +0000, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Shawn Lindsay <sl******@palouse.net> wrote:

I'm trying to write a plugin for some blogging software (blosxom), and
I wanted to make use of the <au> aka <author> tag.

What would its meaning be?

The meaning would be the name of an author. I'm trying to randomly select
a quote like from a fortune file and have it spit out something that
resembles an epigraph. It would be like:

<blockquote><cite>I hate quotations.</cite><br /><br /><br /><au
class="quote">--Ralph Waldo Emerson</au></blockquote>

Better would be something like
<blockquote><div>I hate quotations.</div>
<cite>--Ralph Waldo Emerson</cite>
</blockquote>

(or maybe the <cite> outside the <blockquote>, that's a matter of
debate, see the archive)

Note use of <cite> for the name rather than the quote, and the
omission of all the <br> tags - use stylesheets to put margin or
padding on the <cite> or <div> instead.

--
Chris

[Ian Rastall]

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 05:17:40 -0800, Shawn Lindsay wrote:

I guess I'd better learn to use <span>

Shawn, <span> is very simple. It's sort of a generic tag, like
<div>, except <div> is block-level, and <span> is inline. You just
use a class with it. So if you define:

..au {float:right; white-space: nowrap;}

then your <span> would be:

<span class="au">Ralph Waldo Emerson</span>

Ian
--
http://www.aspipes.org/
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://www.learnsomethingnew.us/

[Haines Brown]

Ian Rastall <id*******@sbcglobal.net> writes:

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 05:17:40 -0800, Shawn Lindsay wrote:

I guess I'd better learn to use <span>

Shawn, <span> is very simple. It's sort of a generic tag, like
<div>, except <div> is block-level, and <span> is inline. You just
use a class with it. So if you define:

.au {float:right; white-space: nowrap;}

then your <span> would be:

<span class="au">Ralph Waldo Emerson</span>

Ian

Sorry to be a bit slow on the uptake, but I thought I'd try this
out. Works nicely except that the author ends up on the same line as
the following text. Because it is float right, it just inserts itself
into the following line. I haven't figured out how to work around
this without introducing complications.

--
Haines Brown
br****@hartford-hwp.com
kb****@arrl.net
www.hartford-hwp.com

[Haines Brown]

Ian Rastall <id*******@sbcglobal.net> writes:

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 05:17:40 -0800, Shawn Lindsay wrote:

I guess I'd better learn to use <span>

Shawn, <span> is very simple. It's sort of a generic tag, like
<div>, except <div> is block-level, and <span> is inline. You just
use a class with it. So if you define:

.au {float:right; white-space: nowrap;}

then your <span> would be:

<span class="au">Ralph Waldo Emerson</span>

[My original comment disappeared, and I apologize if this this
duplicates the message just sent.]

Ian, your suggestion works, but the author name on my browser ends up
on the same line as the next line of text because of the float. Haven't
found any fix for this yet.

--
Haines Brown
br****@hartford-hwp.com
kb****@arrl.net
www.hartford-hwp.com

[Haines Brown]

Haines Brown <br****@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:

Ian Rastall <id*******@sbcglobal.net> writes:

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 05:17:40 -0800, Shawn Lindsay wrote:

I guess I'd better learn to use <span>

Shawn, <span> is very simple. It's sort of a generic tag, like
<div>, except <div> is block-level, and <span> is inline. You just
use a class with it. So if you define:

.au {float:right; white-space: nowrap;}

then your <span> would be:

<span class="au">Ralph Waldo Emerson</span>

I keep trying to get this to work in terms of the space between the
author and the next line of text, especially if the author line is
broken with a <br /> (as it often is with a web address or complicated
descriptor), but no go. I finally had to do the following:

.block-au { text-align: right; }

...

<blockquote>
<p>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed
diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna
aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo
duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea
takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
<div class="block-au">Lolipop McGurgle</div>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit
esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla
facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui
blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te
feugait nulla facilisi.
...

I left out the wite-space attribute, for I had no idea what it is.

--
Haines Brown
br****@hartford-hwp.com
kb****@arrl.net
www.hartford-hwp.com

[Ian Rastall]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 14:21:42 GMT, Haines Brown wrote:

Ian, your suggestion works, but the author name on my browser ends up
on the same line as the next line of text because of the float. Haven't
found any fix for this yet.

I apologize. I had just copied/pasted your CSS to use as an example,
and didn't notice the "float". To be honest, the float/clear rules
have always confused me, so I wouldn't be any help with that. If I
ever want to break up lines, I just rely on <br />. If you want
everything on the same line, then of course the "float" doesn't need
to be in there.

Ian
--
http://www.aspipes.org/
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://www.learnsomethingnew.us/

[Ian Rastall]

Hi Haines. I think I see what your need is. The way I usually do
this is:

p.right {text-align: right;}

<blockquote>
<p>This is the text that represents a quote, or whatever. Possibly a
letter in a short story.</p>
<p class="right">Author's Name</p>
</blockquote>

You might also try:

<p class="right">Sincerely,<br />Author's Name</p>

I hope that helps.

Ian
--
http://www.aspipes.org/
http://www.bookstacks.org/
http://www.learnsomethingnew.us/

[Haines Brown]

Ian Rastall <id*******@sbcglobal.net> writes:

Hi Haines. I think I see what your need is. The way I usually do
this is:

p.right {text-align: right;}

<blockquote>
<p>This is the text that represents a quote, or whatever. Possibly a
letter in a short story.</p>
<p class="right">Author's Name</p>
</blockquote>

Yes, that of course works, and your <p> seems preferable to my use of
<div>. Unless some lurker offers an improvement, I guess this is the
approach to use. Your float: right was a nice idea, but didn't work,
unfortunately. Here's what I'll use for the sake of pickiness (before
this I was placing the author left, preceeded by —, simply by
means of <br />):

blockquote { padding: 0.3em; }
p.author {
text-align: right;
font-size: 0.9em;
padding-right: 0.6em;
}

...

<blockquote cite="URL">
<p>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed
diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna
aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.
</p>
<p class="author">
Lolipop McGurgle<br />
<cite class="book">Apologia pro mea vita</cite>
</p>
</blockquote>

--
Haines Brown

[Brian]

Ian Rastall wrote:

Hi Haines. I think I see what your need is. The way I usually do
this is:

p.right {text-align: right;}
"right" is a poor choice for a class name.
<blockquote>
<p>This is the text that represents a quote, or whatever. Possibly a
letter in a short story.</p>
<p class="right">Author's Name</p>

Does the author's name by itself contstitute a paragraph? How about
using <div> instead?

<blockquote cite="uri">
<p>This is the text that represents a quote,
or whatever. Possibly a letter in a short
story.</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="author">Author's Name</div>

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me