RE: Navigational features

Hi Bruce

 

Thanks for trying on this one.  I would really like to find another term.
The ones you suggest though have the same problem.  They all sound like
phrases that one can guess the meaning of (and one would be wrong).  In fact
those would all lead a person to the problem Jim Thatcher was citing.  

 

So let's see.   We need to bring some of the essential parts of the
definition up into the phrase so that the phrase is more self explanatory.
OR we need to coin a term that people won't guess the meaning of  (as you
suggested with your  "marklar" - though that seems to indicate markup in
some way).    

 

AT determinable?  (but we don't just mean AT.  And that definition begs one
to define AT exactly)

 

User Agent Determinable (this is better - and since AT is a user agent.   Is
it too narrow?   Does it actually get to what we mean?   If we don't mean
user agent determinable, what do we think is going to be doing the
determination?    

 

This one still has the problem that people will try to interpret it without
reading the definition and will exclude AT from the User Agent Determinable.
Or they could say "well of course the user agent can determine it or they
couldn't render it" .    Actually that criticism doesn't make sense since
the user agent only needs to determine what it should be rendered like to
render it - it doesn't need to know structure etc.    So may be it does
work. 

 

Sorry for stream of consciousness - but was trying to walk Bruce's idea
since we are getting so much confusion on this and "programmatically
determined" is rather opaque to most readers.  

 

If we pluralize Agent to indicate that it might be (and needs to be) more
than just one agent (so AT is in there too) we get

"User Agents Determinable"     

It sounds enough like what it means.   It is just awkward enough to get the
reader to read the definition - and to remember AT and not just the
'browser' user agent.

 

 

What do you think?

 

Got other, better ideas?     Programmatically determined is a bit...  well..
non-optimal as a term. 

 


Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 

 

 


  _____  


From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Bailey, Bruce
Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2005 10:32 AM
To: Gregg Vanderheiden; Guide Lines list
Subject: RE: Navigational features

> Can you be a little more specific?

The current subtly of the discussion about heading leads me to conclude that
the meaning behind "programmatically determined" is more fluid than is being
acknowledged.  But I will put that issue aside for the moment.

> "Programmatically determined" is defined in the glossary.
> If the definition isn't clear we need to fix it. 

And it is a fine definition.  That is *not* the problem.

> It is a rather important definition and a term specific to this work.

Understood.  The problem is that the term is used so frequently and so
particularly that even after repeated trips to the glossary the phrase
interrupts naturally reading of success criteria.  I honestly believe that
replacing "programmatically determined" with "marklar" would be an
improvement -- readers would not be fooled into thinking they understood
what was meant.

It is not about writing a good definition.  It is about finding a better
term.  I have to believe that there is a term of art that can be used with
the intended definition.  Machine processable?  Reducible to an algorithm?
Wholly deterministic?  NP-complete?