Re: abbr and acronym

Harry Maugans <hmaugans@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/07, Tina Holmboe <tina@greytower.net> wrote:
>>
>>   I don't agree in taking out elements that HAVE a semantic
>>   interpretation.
>>
>
> I agree 100% with this.

I actually don't. You should see it in all the available angles, not just  
one.
For instance, say I'm writing a webpage in french, and have different  
acronyms and abbreviations to put in the text. How would I mark them up  
individually? Should I use <abbr> and <acronym> following the W3C spec  
that follows the english definitions, or use them following the french  
definitions? Same thing for abbrs/acronyms like "J.-PEG" and "My-S.Q.L."

<em>, <strong>, <p> and the likes are dictionary-definition independant;  
so there should also be one generic <abbr> element for a purpose, which is  
marking up both abbreviations and acronyms, and any of their subsets.

> Not all webmasters are actively following W3, and it might
> take years (if ever) for them to eventually realize they're using a tag  
> that, at one point in time was fine, but now
> doesn't exist anymore.
You know, XHTML2 is very different from HTML4 and even XHTML1 / 1.1. So if  
web authors would want to move from those markup languages to the new one  
(XHTML 2), they will have to introduce a lot of serious changes to their  
markup. Replacing the tag <acronym> with <abbr> is just a minor change  
they'll be required to do.

> That just doesn't seem like positive progression to me.
Same as removing <b> and <i> from future specs, when they're widely used.
Removing <acronym> may not be a positive progression; it's at least a  
*reasonable* one to me.

-- 
Yahia
<http://yahia.ma/antiblog/>

Received on Monday, 26 March 2007 19:45:45 UTC