Re: Re[2]: FW: acronym in title...

At 04:29 PM 2003-03-13, Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Al Gilman" <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
>To: <ishida@w3.org>; <w3c-i18n-ig@w3.org>; <public-i18n-geo@w3.org>
>Cc: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
>Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 3:57 PM
>Subject: Re[2]: FW: acronym in title...
>
> >I think that the one thing I should add right away is that there
> >is an option using "annotation" techniques to leave the attribute as is
> >and introduce a higher-quality equivalent through a structure which
> >refers to the attribute.
>
>Hum... interesting idea... but how do you think to apply this?

I would approach the assistive technology developers and ask what
kind of an indirect relationship they could most readily see
implementing.  Will they come to the W3C DOM for this information?
Do we need to get it into MSAA?

It would not be hard to write a tool that reads a glossary and
adds things like the language information to HTML attributes where
they appear in the DOM.  Then the assistive technology could know that
'Piazza San Marco' was Italian.

>So, as you told in the last e-mail, there is no possibility to have it
>before XHTML 2.0?
Is not possible to make a "correction" to, for example, XHTML 1.x (creating,
>for eg. XHTML 1.2?)

The problem is that if the HTML Working Group were to introduce an
incompatible change in a minor release like that, who would implement
it?  The conventional wisdom is "nobody."  And I am not inclined to
second-guess the experts on that point.

Incompatible changes in HTML are generally not going to be considered
outside the XHTML 2.0 activity, as it is risky to think with the heavy use
of HTML all the time that any incompatible changes will be taken up in
practice, even with the best efforts of the HTML WG.

XHTML 2.0 is the version that HTML WG is working on.  We would have to have
a flaming disaster going on to get an incompatible change released as some
sort of an interim patch, and it is not clear who would implement it.

Besides, there are too many, too good, ways to do this in ways that
interoperate with HTML 2.0.

One can cite an off-page annotation resource using the existing LINK and META
features of HTML.  There is also the 'profile' attribute on the HEAD element
which is intended for this.

There is a a very lively discussion in the TAG as we speak on how to put in
a hook for site metadata, and the site metadata can identify page-specific
annotation resources or whatever.  This metadata hook may be visible in a
HEAD request to any page or to the root page of a site.

The point is that there are many ways to skin this cat, we want to go with
the flow of the larger community to the extent we can, but there will be at
least one and quite possibly several ways of doing this (including support
for backward-compatible XHTML and HTML4 texts) that at least have available
implementations if they are not also picked up and implemented very broadly
in browsers.

There is also a plugin option for the browser extension.  Also an
independent screen scraper like Atomica.

Al

> >This issue is coupled with providing clarifying information for natural
> >language in all kinds of texts.  PF will have a page in public on this
>topic
> >in a few days.
>
>Wonderful :)
>
>Roberto Scano
>IWA/HWG EMEA Coordinator
>W3C Advisory Committee Representative for IWA/HWG
>International Webmasters Association / HTML Writers Guild
>http://www.iwanet.org - http://www.hwg.org
>E-Mail: emea@iwanet.org - w3c-rep@iwanet.org
>--------------------------------------------------------------------

Received on Thursday, 13 March 2003 19:53:09 UTC