Re: <dialog>

aloha, ian!

i proposed a single letter element -- D -- for "dialogue" precisely 
because it will be used so often -- for example, in marking up a 
fictional story, one would not use Q or QUOTE to mark dialogue, 
because one is not quoting the characters, rather, the dialogue indicates
that the author is speaking in that character's voice...

i fail, therefore, to understand, why a single letter element -- D --
and its counterpart -- ND -- shouldn't be considered as a replacement
for DIALOGUE -- on the contrary, it seems like the most sensible and
simplest solution as to what to name the DIALGUE element whilst 
keeping possible the use of DIALOG as an element in HTML5 analagous to
that signified by aria-dialog

sam, chris -- is this an ISSUE or a bug?

gregory.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
LANGUAGE, n.  The music with which we charm the serpents guarding 
another's treasure.     -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
-----------------------------------------------------------------
            Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
     Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
UBATS: United Blind Advocates for Talking Signs: http://ubats.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------

---------- Original Message -----------
From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
To: William Loughborough <wloughborough@gmail.com>, "Gregory J. Rosmaita" 
<oedipus@hicom.net>
Cc: wai-xtech@w3.org, w3c-wai-pf@w3.org, public-pfwg-comments@w3.org, 
public-html@w3.org
Sent: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:31:31 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: <dialog>

> On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
> > 
> > i think i have a "solution" to the dialogue versus dialog impasse -- 
a 
> > single letter element name for dialogue (along with a child element 
to 
> > signify what is not dialogue (such as stage directions) -- should i 
log 
> > this proposal as a bug?
> 
> The problem with <d> is that it's too short. Single-letter (or 
> even two letter) element names only really make sense if the 
> author is going to be using them often enough that it makes 
> sense to trade clarity for terseness. In this case, this is not 
> an element we expect to see used a lot, so using a short name is 
> undesireable.
> 
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, William Loughborough wrote:
> >
> > How about if I convince you to rename HTML5's <dialog> something more 
> > obscure like <harold>? It's just a string of symbols.
> 
> As I mentioned in my earlier e-mail, numerous alternative names 
> have been considered; unfortunately, none have been found to be 
> particularly suitable in comparison to <dialog>.
> 
> I should note that it isn't the end of the world if both 
> vocabularies use 'dialog' for different things. I only asked 
> whether ARIA might consider changing 'dialog' to something like 
> 'dialogbox' because such a change seems relatively simple to 
> make, and would remove a point of confusion that has been 
> reported by people who are familiar with ARIA and HTML5.
> 
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,
> '``.    fL http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,  
>  _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take 
> longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
------- End of Original Message -------

Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 06:53:26 UTC