cites for blockquotes

[John Gruber]

Olivier Scherler <os-lists at ithink.ch> wrote on 03/19/04 at 4:37p:

> OK. Then what about detecting this
> 
> > --Blah blah
> 
> and giving the paragraph a particular class, to be able to apply an indent?

No, that'd be totally wrong.

Markdown should never be looking for particularly formatted
paragraphs and doing special things to them. Down that path lies
madness.

What I *would* like to add is a simple -- but explicit -- mechanism
for adding additional attributes. This is not something that will
make it into version 1.0 -- it'll come later.

Curly brackets are still available, and I've been saving them for this.

Imagine something like this:

    --Blah blah   {.attributionline}
    
Turning into:

    <p class="attributionline">--Blah blah</p>

Or, with headers:

    ## My Header 2                              {#section2}

Turning into:

    <h2 id="section2">My Header 2</h2>

The idea being that the `{...}` sequence would have to come at the
end of a paragraph or header. Inside, Markdown would look for
.classNames and #idNames.

**This is just a rough idea.** There are all sorts of issues that
would be involved:

*   Perhaps it's too limiting, because it would only allow you to
    add class and id attributes.
*   What elements could you use this trick for? I'm thinking only
    headers and paragraphs.

But, the point is, Markdown would only be adding class or id
attributes *explicitly*, rather than *implicitly*.

-J.G.