- From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:26:28 -0500
- To: HTML WG Public List <public-html@w3.org>
- Cc: Doug Jones <doug_b_jones@mac.com>, Matthew Raymond <mattraymond@earthlink.net>
Matthew Raymond wrote, quote: > It wouldn't be harmful to read out acronyms by letter. In > fact, with all the annoying quasi-acronyms flying around > (XUL, XAML, PNG, MNG, et cetera), I'd prefer it. unquote beware of that for which you wish... last century, when the XHTML activity was first announced, on the w3c site, i spent a long time wondering what: X H T M L T M was... i thought i knew what the X the H the T the M and the L were, but i couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what the terminal T and M stood for, until i listened to the document source, and discovered that the terminal T and M were marked as superscript, which i know to be a print convention for representing a trademark assertion... nor did i ever realize - because it was always read character by character - why i18n was the abbreviation for internationalization, until i was asked to join the a11y project at the linux foundation, and suddenly realized the unconventional convention behind the abbreviation. on the web, NOTHING is self-evident. the user should be the one who decides how an expansion is expressed -- visually, aurally, tactilely -- but in order to do so, he or she needs guidance, which can only be provided by authors writing to a specification; in particular, an attribute i've proposed for abbreviation markup, "expressed-as", which is different and distinct from "pronounced", which properly falls under the domain of ACSS. i have more concrete suggestions and opinions on this topic to discuss, but i first need to clear the use of my member- confidential posts on the topic of abbreviation markup to the PF WG to this, a public list, or compile them into an integrated whole. gregory. ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Gregory J. Rosmaita: oedipus@hicom.net or gregory@ubats.org skype: oedipusnj sites: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/ http://ubats.org http://my.opera.com/oedipus/ ----------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Friday, 30 March 2007 03:26:41 UTC