- 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