Re: 1.4 h: Explainer?

At 04:49 PM 02/07/97 -0800, Jon Bosak wrote:
>[Liora Alschuler:]
>
>| This is a link caption so call it a "link caption" or if there are
>| reasons not to use caption, then some of the other common words
>| already used to describe what it does: "link title" or "link subtitle"

It may or may not be a title.

>
>I don't like "explainer" either (there seems to be a consensus
>building on the dislike, anyway), but "caption" is too

I like explainer. Its purpose is to explain to the user why they might want
to follow this link (rather, this particular linkend of it). (See Landow
'87, for example). The explanation might be rendered in lots of ways:
subtitle, audio, icon choice, menu-item-name, etc.

The reason it's there in the first place is that it is quite standard
terminology in the hypermedia community (which is not to say we have to
follow it; I actually like caption almost as well).

>presentationally specific; you wouldn't want to call this a caption if
>it were an item in a menu list, for example.  I would suggest "label"
>(that is, more formally, "link label").

I find 'title' about as presentation-specific as 'caption'. it makes me
think of big print at the beginning of something.

Steve

Received on Monday, 10 February 1997 17:50:57 UTC