Does order affect meaning (was: NEW: Issue #1609)

At 06:52 24/08/2005, bugzilla@webby.trace.wisc.edu wrote:

>[This e-mail has been automatically generated. The following NEW issue was 
>added
>to Bugzilla earlier today.]
>
>   1.3 L3 SC1 recommend removing the When clause
>     -> http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/show_bug.cgi?id=1609

Greg Lowney says he can't think of real-world examples where reordering the 
contents would not affect their meaning. However, this depends on the level 
you are considering: a set of delivery units, single delivery units or even 
lower levels. Ordering is important for the main content of a delivery 
unit, but some content does not have a logical order relation with regard 
to the main flow, e.g. sidebars are concurrent to the main flow, and 
reordering them does not affect the meaning.

At the sentence level, the situation is obviously very different. Consider 
for example the differences between:
- Only I hit him on the eye.
- I only hit him on the eye.
- I hit him only on the eye.
- I hit him on the eye only.

Regards,

Christophe Strobbe


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/ 

Received on Wednesday, 24 August 2005 11:03:59 UTC