- From: Christoph Päper <christoph.paeper@tu-clausthal.de>
- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:32:47 +0100
- To: <www-html@w3.org>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
*Karl Dubost*: > Le 11 déc. 2003, à 07:02, Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG a écrit > >> UN is not abbreviation but Acronym... an abbreviation could be: >> >> <abbr title="Monday" xml:lang="en">Mon.</abbr> >> >> A question for clarify: the abbreviation must end with a . That's how I handle it in German documents, but look at CNN: "United States" gets dots ("U.S.") while "United Nations" doesn't ("UN"). > See HTML 4.01 The specification has been proven misleading and self-contradictory in this regard more than once. > <ABBR title="World Wide Web">WWW</ABBR> In German it's pronounced letter by letter ("w@ w@ w@"), but usually expanded in English, because "double-u, double-u, double-u" would be longer. This behaviour is not expressable in HTML and maybe it shouldn't be, because it's presentational. > <ABBR title="Abbreviation">abbr.</ABBR> That's clearly an abbreviation and an abbreviation must always be expanded. I doubt, though, that the 'title' attribute is appropriate for the full form. You almost can't provide little extra information on demand with it, like in <acronym title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</acronym>, anymore, because some browser might expand it unwanted (imagine "DNA" or "PET"). IMHO it should be possible to link a resource that further explains how to treat abbreviations and acronyms, which are just a special case of abbreviations anyway, found marked-up in the page. Like so: <link rel="stylesheet abbr" href="/abbreviations.css" type="text/css" media="aural"/> ... <p xml:lang="en"><abbr>e.g.</abbr>, <abbr>abbr.</abbr>, <acronym>WWW</acronym>, <acronym>NATO</acronym>.</p> /* /abbreviations.css */ abbr("abbr."):lang(en) {content: "abbreviation";} abbr("WWW"):lang(en) {content: "World Wide Web"} abbr("WWW"):lang(de) {content: "W W W";} abbr("NATO") {content: "Nato";} Or something more specialised for this job than (an enhanced version of) CSS, like a CSV file or even some XML application. Screenreaders should then use this in addition to built-in tables: "For example, abbreviation, World Wide Web, Nato." Quite similar a glossary might work: <link rel="glossary" href="/glossary"/> ... <term>foo</term> ; /glossary.txt foo: A generic placeholder. <!-- /glossary.html --> ... <dl><dt id="foo">foo</dt><dd>A generic placeholder.</dd></dl> would make <term/> either linked to the appropriate glossary entry or use the description from the glossary file to display a tool-tip / balloon-help on mouse-over. > You can add on the top of that for example, that you have in fact > in french, three different things abbreviation, acronyms and "sigle". Is a "sigle" an initialism or something different?
Received on Thursday, 11 December 2003 09:36:41 UTC