RE: Abbreviations and Acronyms: [techs] Latest HTML Techniques Draft

I'm delighted to hear from Chaals and Richard that the linguists have no
objections to lumping acronyms and abbreviations together under a single
element <abbr>.  If ruby is available as an additional option, so much
the better.

John


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-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 8:32 am
To: Patrizia Bertini
Cc: Web Content Guidelines
Subject: Re: Abbreviations and Acronyms: [techs] Latest HTML Techniques
Draft



As a linguist I think that since all acronyms are "abbreviations" in the
generic sense of the term, but that not all abbreviations are acronyms
in any sense, it is not wrong to call the whole lot abbreviations and
put them in an element called "abbr".

As a web professional I think it is not wrong to use "accortado" as the
element name either.

I do think there is value in looking at the ruby element [1], introduced
in XHTML 1.1 and currently included in XHTML 2, which is designed to
provide the kind of expansion that we want for abbreviations of various
kinds, and which allows simple styling to give us the different choices
we would like to have for presenting these things. If there is some
reason not to use ruby itself, then I think its structure is still a
very good model for any new element that does what we want.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-ruby-20010531/

Cheers

Chaals

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Patrizia Bertini wrote:

>
>Il giorno 10/dic/03, alle 22:27, John M Slatin ha scritto:
>
>>
>
>> abbr title="By the way">BTW</abbr>, I wonder how the linguists feel 
>> about making acronym and abbreviation synonymous?
>>
>> John
>>
>
>Not very well in fact... as a Linguist, i don't agree in this 
>assimilation. one thing is an acronym, an other thing is an 
>abbreviation. one way to joint these two element would to find out a 
>new way to express them like an element like <expand text>, in these 
>case, if we talk about expanding and / or explain an abbreviation and 
>acronym i think it could be ok, but we can't call an acronym as an 
>abbreviation. an LTD.  is not like an Inc. for instance and the meaning

>that these two words express are pretty different.
>
>is formally wrong to use only the abbr elemt, better to find out a 
>third way IMVHO.
>
>M2p -- pat
>
>

Charles McCathieNevile  http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  tel: +61 409
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Received on Friday, 12 December 2003 09:48:06 UTC