On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Toby Inkster wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-07-28 at 18:42, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> > But what use would the citetype="..." attribute have? There are some
> > imaginable uses, like helping the browser tell the user that the reference
> > probably cannot be followed - if the browser is not capable of rendering
> > PNG for example. This in turn might be wrong information. The URL
> > could in fact refer to an image file in any format, or any other data, and
> > this could even be changed without notice.
>
> I don't think that "authors could use it to inadvertently convey false
> information" is a reason for disallowing an attribute or element.

The point is that when you would use e.g. the hypothetical citytype="..."
attribute, or when you use e.g. the type="..." attribute in <a> in
XHTML 1.0, you are making a proposition about matters that are (in most
cases) beyond your control. So it's different from unintentional or
intentional abuse of an element or an attribute against its definition.

Moreover, the possibility of inadvertant errors _can_ be a valid argument
against proposed markup constructs - if it can be estimated that erroneous
use will be frequent as compared with correct use.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/