RE: 3.1 comments

Ineke van der Maat wrote the following in response to Lisa's comments:

<blockquote>
Why should a form do it [provide dictionary search]? Are you sure that
user agents  will find all the 
words used  in websites in dictionaries. Also when politics introduced
them 
an hour before?
Do you really believe language is dead??

And because Dutch is not a dead language, the Dutch language will also 
change a bit in october.  A bit of grammar will change, some
inclinations of 
verbs will become different from now, some combinations of words will
change 
or words will be written differently from now.

For Dutch i never use a dictionary and will never do. I simply have the
only 
formal
"Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal" That is not a dictionary but only a list
of 
words that are formally permitted in Dutch language. This list ist
obliged 
to be used in education and public service.
</blockquote>

I'm fascinated to learn that there is such a wordlist for Dutch-- at the
same time that the language is so clearly "built" to evolve rapidly by
permitting previously unknown wordcombinations and so on.

Each language and each place where a language is spoken will have its
own variations on this theme.

It was my hope in writing the success criterion to specify only that "a
mechanism is available" for finding definitions that this would support
the rich variety of languages and language practices.

In the document called Guide to GL 3.1 L2 SC1 (catchy title! It's linked
from the proosal for the Guideline ) there is a brief discussion of a
"dictionary cascade."  This would allow authors to specify a list of
dictionaries and wordlists, etc., to be searched for definitions; the
cascade would determine the search order.  This approach, if
implemented, would allow for great flexibility-- authors could include
their own private wordlists as well as standard dictionaries and
government-authorized lists approved for the schools, and so on.

Would some words escape the net? Almost certainly. But I think we can
provide better support for users with reading disabilities without
having to turn languages into museums...

John

"Good design is accessible design."

Dr. John M. Slatin, Director 
Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin 
FAC 248C 
1 University Station G9600 
Austin, TX 78712 
ph 512-495-4288, fax 512-495-4524 
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu 
Web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility 



-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Ineke van der Maat
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 7:13 PM
To: lisa@ubaccess.com; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: 3.1 comments



hello Lisa,

You wrote:
>A form that searches an on line dictionary can easy be provided by the 
>user
>agent . (There is currently a free >firefox extension that will add a 
>dictionary to your browser.)
>Similarly providing a spoken version  can typically be addressed by the

>user agent - such as text help or cloud >world -if -and it is an if- 
>enough pronunciation  information is available.

Why should a form do it? Are you sure that user agents  will find all
the 
words used  in websites in dictionaries. Also when politics introduced
them 
an hour before?
Do you really believe language is dead??

And because Dutch is not a dead language, the Dutch language will also 
change a bit in october.  A bit of grammar will change, some
inclinations of 
verbs will become different from now, some combinations of words will
change 
or words will be written differently from now.

For Dutch i never use a dictionary and will never do. I simply have the
only 
formal
"Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal" That is not a dictionary but only a list
of 
words that are formally permitted in Dutch language. This list ist
obliged 
to be used in education and public service.

Also an updated "Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal" will be published in 
october. It will contain less words than the current one. Most simple
word 
combinations will be removed. Only a few examples with the entry word
will 
be given  to give the direction how to build word combinations and the 
difficult combinations will be given.

Also Surinam  and Flemish words will be added to the list, but  Dutch
words 
that are not used often are removed from the list too. They still can be

used in texts.

This list is not online and online  Dutch dictionaries have spellings of

words that conflict with the formal Dutch spelling in this so called
"Green 
book".

i don't know if this is also in other languages.


Greetings from the Netherlands
Ineke van der Maat

Received on Thursday, 5 May 2005 02:46:39 UTC