- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 03:40:14 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Anne Pemberton <apembert@erols.com>
- cc: "GLWAI Guidelines WG (GL - WAI Guidelines WG)" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
In general I am strongly in favour of using words understood by everyone, not
just geeks. But there are cases where the terms most easily understood do not
convey the meaning needed. "Home page" is a case in point - the part off the
Web I work in has several different start pages, depending on what someone is
doing. So no on e of them is the "home page" - there is the "AU group page",
the "w3C home page", the "w3c technical reports page" and so on.
In this case I would argue that using the term URL is wrong. In such cases,
we are better off using the correct term, and explaining ourselves in the
glossary.
I realise that this probably comes from being deeply immersed in W3C culture,
but there are sometimes deliberate decisions taken as to why W3C culture is
the way it is. And this document is a W3C specification first and foremost.
Charles
On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Anne Pemberton wrote:
Al and Sean,
Thanks muchly for the help.
May I suggest that URI be used sparingly if at all in the
guidelines, or perhaps used as "URI/URL" so that the non-geeks will
understand what is being said. The audience for the guidelines includes the
development community, but goes way past it.... to the non-geek development
community <grin> ...
I would also like to see other common word usages incorporated in
an effort to simplify the language to reach a wider audience than the
"geek" web development community. In the non-geek web savvy world, it's a
URL .... it the non-geek web savvy world, it is a web page, not a document
.... and in the non-geek web savvy world, the opening page of a site (or
root URL) is the Home Page .... I'd favor use of the non-geek words as much
as possible with links to the geek-world words in a glossary....
Received on Sunday, 23 September 2001 03:40:16 UTC