Possible withdrawal of implicit link alias request, and `<cite>`

[Jelks Cabaniss]

Some time ago, I suggested creating having an alternate (or an "alias" as
John later termed it) for the implicit link style.  I.e., intead of like
[this][], do it like [this] and leave off the `[]` at the end.

[this]: http://example.org

I'd like to withdraw that suggestion.

In reading over technical documents -- at the W3C site, the RFCs at the
IETF, etc. -- I see that square brackets visually denote what (x)HTML calls
`<cite>`.

Yes, the HTML 4 Rec's definition of `<cite>` is woefully ambiguous, and
while it's unlikely to be generally used by Joe Homepager or Way k3wl CSS
Effects Guy, it's fairly common in both the humanities and technical
documentation arenas (i.e., people who would probably prefer using the more
expressive TEI or Docbook vocabularies, if only they were as browser-suited
today as HTML).  The way it's generally used is to denote the title of a
work (i.e., something that *could* be expressible via a URN), or something
previously linked to, but you don't want to keep making it a link every time
you refer to it.  Put another way, "that which *could* be a link, but isn't
here."

For example, say we're talking about [RFC 3023][].  That first mention of it
right there will quite appropriately become a link in Markdown.  But if I
wanted to refer to it subsequently by name *without* it being a link each
time, I would use `<cite>RFC 3023</cite>` in HTML, or `[RFC 3023]` in plain
text.  If the cited term has those niggling little `[]` after it, it's an
implicit link; without them, it's a citation.

[RFC 3023]: http://rfc3023.x42.com/

Of course, there *is* a problem (isn't there always?): how would you
distiguish between citations and "just plain square brackets"?  It wouldn't
be very pleasant while writing about the [x]HTML family to see that turned
into "... the <cite>x</cite>HTML family"...


/Jelks