RE: Contracted words in Hebrew

Gregg,If disambiguation is the problem we're trying to solve, that's
fine. But it won't helpsolve that problem if we describe it incorrectly,
and the term "contracted words" is not an accurate term for Hebrew words
in which vowels are indicated by diacritical marks.

Contractions in English, such as "isn't," "It's," and so forth, are
formed when *two* words are joined together and some of the letters are
delted and replaced with an apostrophe.  That's not the ame thing at all
as the case of single words in languages that use diacritics to indicate
vowels, etc.

John


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-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Gregg Vanderheiden
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 11:49 PM
To: 'WAI-GL'
Subject: RE: Contracted words in Hebrew



Actually,  you appear to have missed both the problem and suggested
solution.  I think you are referring to older discussions.

The problem was ambiguous words.   Where, by leaving out vowels and
marks
you ended up with written contractions that could stand for any of
several different words. (not words that have different  but unique ways
of being written). 

The solution under discussion was just to ensure that there was some
means
for disambiguating.  It did not specify how.   If this can be done
automatically, then there may be no requirement that this be done at all
by the author.  Thus there would be no requirement to write in "Kiddie"
language - or even to provide any markup.   But we are still exploring
this
- hence the conversations. 

By the way - this is also a problem with Chinese and some Japanese
writing
systems.   Thus it is one that we were asked to consider and think of
ways
to address.

What will end up in the final guidelines -- we do not know yet.  But we
are not taking problems off the table.  Nor making any judgments about
what the solutions strategies will be -- and what we would leave in as
suggestions for the various levels.  

If you have ideas for addressing things or observations that are not
already in Bugzilla (and therefore open issues  - not forgotten issues
or comments) please contribute.  But please don't tell people to be
quiet. 

(and do give some latitude for people to make mistakes or plow old
ground.
It happens.   But we try to pick up the old issues and comments when we
do
reviews -- and it works out in our discussions where we remind people of
past discussions and input. )

Please join us for the discussions. 
 
Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Joe Clark
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 5:13 PM
To: WAI-GL
Subject: Re: Contracted words in Hebrew


> Perhaps I asked her the wrong question-- did anyone have something 
> else in mind in discussing contractions in Hebrew?

The intent in this patently ridiculous guideline is to force authors to
write kiddie Hebrew and Arabic (and Urdu, Pashto, Dari, and the like,
possibly even Yiddish, a more unusual case) with vowels always in place.

That isn't how we write the adult forms of those languages.

Can we drop this now?

-- 

    Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
    Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
    Expect criticism if you top-post

Received on Friday, 7 May 2004 23:58:25 UTC