Re: Brainstorming - abbreviations

Le jeudi 15 mars 2007 à 13:11 -0700, Bill Mason a écrit :

> What do you perceive abbr being used incorrectly for?

Most of the time, abbr is used as an acronym element: there is a
confusion between this radically semantically different elements. I
often read online tutorials or online discuss on which we can find this
confusion.

> > We shouldn't take the decision of keeping or not an element by watching
> > the percentage of people who use it. We must to ask the following
> > question 'Is this element useful?' and in this case the answer is
> > positive, due to the number of acronyms used nowadays.
> 
> I believe you just argued that:
> 
> * Whether or not to keep an element should not be based on usage numbers.
> * Acronym is a useful element because of its usage numbers.
> * So acronym should be kept.

I tried to say that acronym is useful __despite__ its usage number on
the Internet. Obviously, there are only some advised people who use it
(and abbr too). But if there's no acronym element, there's a semantic
gap to fill.

On the contrary, the usages, in the technical and now common language of
acronyms are more and more numerous.

> The question of whether acronym is used more would need to address, for 
> one thing, the fact that Internet Explorer supports only acronym in some 
> way, such as displaying tooltips, and does not support abbr.

I'm okay with that.

> If acronym is useful for valid semantic reasons, then fine.  But if its 
> perceived usefulness is skewed by deficiencies in current browser 
> implementations causing skewed overall usage numbers, then your question 
> is not yet answered.

I agree and that's why i approve Robert's arguments. In my opinion,
acronym correspond to a real semantic necessity. Don't take care of the
actual usage numbers on the Internet but rather of the real value of a
such element.

-- 
Guillaume Guérin, Webdeveloper -- http://www.libert-fr.com/ 
"Numerical accessibility : more than good manners, it's an attitude"

Received on Thursday, 15 March 2007 20:41:27 UTC