Re: What's in a name?

On 09/19/2012 08:39 AM, Laura Carlson wrote:
> Hi James, Cynthia, David, and Ian,
>
> Sam wrote to Leif in another thread:
>
>> And (recognizing that I do NOT work for a
>> browser vendor), I do believe that a solution for these problems can be
>> specified in a matter of months and demonstrably conforming public
>> implementations could be produced in a matter of months after that.
>>
>> As to whether or not that attribute should be spelled "longdesc"
>
> One question to our task force browser reps: would you implement a
> change proposal with the exact same verbiage as the instatelongdesc
> proposal [1] if the HTML5 attribute name @longdesc was changed to
> @desc or @describedat something similar [2]? Does the name make a
> difference to your company implementing it?

I will first note that you are not likely to get a straight answer to 
the first question -- pre-announcing support for features before they 
are implemented is rarely a successful strategy.

I will then note that bookending this otherwise reasonable requests with 
emails using the words "unacceptable"[4] and "Formally Object"[5] are 
not conducive to getting the level of participation we need here.

Nor is disparaging others arguments as hollow, specious, and a waste of 
time[6].

I will close this email by noting that David Bolter previously 
participated in this discussion[7], and perhaps the points that he made 
at that time should be discussed.

You might be pleased to see that he seems to agree with you that this 
should not be implemented in ARIA.

> Best Regards,
> Laura
> [1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/InstateLongdesc
> [2] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10455
> Related Ref "New HTML Attribute":
> [3] http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/constriants/newattribute.html

[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2012Sep/0262.html
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2012Sep/0337.html
[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2012Sep/0333.html
[7] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2012Mar/0405.html

Received on Wednesday, 19 September 2012 14:03:08 UTC