Re: [whatwg] Proposal: Inline pronounce element (Tab Atkins Jr.)

On Jun 6, 2014, at 12:04 PM, Charles McCathie Nevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:

> On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 14:22:48 +0200, Koji Ishii <kojiishi@gluesoft.co.jp> wrote:
> 
>> On Jun 5, 2014, at 22:08, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 11:29 AM, Nils Dagsson Moskopp
>>> <nils@dieweltistgarnichtso.net> wrote:
>>>> Brett Zamir <brettz9@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 6/5/2014 3:05 AM, whatwg-request@lists.whatwg.org wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Daniel Morris
>>>>>> <daniel+whatwg@honestempire.com> wrote:
> ...
>>>>>>> There is currently no other text-level semantic that I know of for
>>>>>>> pronunciation, but we have elements for abbreviation and definition.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> As an initial suggestion:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> <pronounce ipa=??a?p?d?>iPad</pronounce>
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> (Where the `ipa` attribute is the pronunciation using the
>>>>>>> International Phonetic Alphabet.)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> What are your thoughts on this,
> ...
>>>>>> This is already theoretically addressed by <link rel=pronunciation>,
>>>>>> linking to a well-defined pronunciation file format.  Nobody
>>>>>> implements that, but nobody implements anything new either, of course.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I think it'd be a lot easier for sites, say along the lines of
>>>>> Wikipedia, to support inline markup to allow users to get a word
>>>>> referenced at the beginning of an article, for example, pronounced
>>>>> accurately.
>>>> 
>>>> Is there any reason one cannot use the <ruby> element for pronunciation?
>>>> 
>>>> Example:
>>>> 
>>>> <ruby>Elfriede Jelinek<rp> (</rp><rt>ɛlˈfʀiːdə ˈjɛlinɛk</rt><rp>) </rp></ruby>
>>> 
>>> That's adequate for visually providing the pronunciation, but I think
>>> the original request was for a way to tell screen readers and similar
>>> tools how to pronounce an unfamiliar word.
>> 
>> True, but one could still use <ruby> for its semantics, and visually use the CSS to hide the pronunciations:
>> 
>>  rp, rt, rtc { display: none; }
> 
> In general screen readers respect HTML. If you use display:none they will not render that content. So please do not do that.
> 
> Besides, the information is normally useful to people who can see it too - or who can partially see it.
> 
>> Screen readers may have supported reading text in <rt> instead of its base text when they supported Japanese. At least some screen readers in Japan does this.
> 
> The common use case for Ruby in both chinese and japanese, as far as I understand, is to provide pronunciation. I don't see why that would be inappropriate in general.

I agree.  The whole idea of using ruby for other kinds of footnote-like annotations is rather red herring because that's not how ruby is used.  Given the presentation of ruby elements are now fully spec'ed by CSS, there's nothing that prevents authors from using other HTML elements such as span, or even add a new element for annotations.  Or perhaps adding some attribute on ruby indicating whether a given ruby text is used to annotate or to indicate pronunciation might be sufficient.

-  R. Niwa

Received on Wednesday, 2 July 2014 00:35:17 UTC