RE: Discussion list guidelines

Hi Daniel,
My comments are below marked with GV::

Gregg

-- ------------------------------
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Human Factors
Dept of Ind. Engr. - U of Wis.
Director - Trace R & D Center
gv@trace.wisc.edu    http://trace.wisc.edu
FAX 608/262-8848
For a list of our listserves send "lists" to listproc@trace.wisc.edu


-----Original Message-----
From:	Daniel Dardailler [SMTP:danield@w3.org]
Sent:	Tuesday, December 02, 1997 9:52 AM
To:	w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject:	Re: Discussion list guidelines



> 1) Keep the discussions friendly. Use (grin) and (smile) in
>    your email if tone could be mistaken. Don't use :-) .

Why are smiley bad ?

GV:: As I understand it, the punctuation are used to determine white space. 
 So it would somewhat more difficult to recognize them but they could be I 
guess someday.    (But I thought we were supposed to come up with rules for 
making comments work on our listserves today. Do I have this wrong? )

For one thing they're international.

GV:: True but if the rest of the message is not international is this of 
real benefit?

MS Word recognizes some basic smileys on the fly (even changes them in
some dingbat), why wouldn't a smart screen reader do the same ?

GV:: Could.   (Again are we doing rules for the future or to facilitate 
discussion today?)

Maybe we need to use the same TODAY/NEW dichotomy we use in Markup
guidelines ?

GV::   Good point.  I think what we might do instead is just put out 
guidelines to use now and revise them someday in the future when the rules 
change.
End GV

For the future, we could define a list of <10 basic smileys whose
usage would be OK and semantics well defined.

Like :-) for "smile", ;-) for "complice smile", :-| for "tough life", :-( 
for
"unhappy". etc.

GV:: What does complice smile mean?

> 5) If new text is inserted within the body of the Old message,
>     mark all new text with author's initials followed by two
>     colons (e.g   GV::  or  GK:: )    At the end put:  End GV.

First I think it should mention that the pieces of the old message,
when copied in, should be "greaterized" one level more, that is, "> "
added in column one.

Now, the algorithm to find original text is not that difficult:
it starts in column one and is not a >.


GV:: see previous posting to AL about ">" being obnoxious or invisible 
depending on your screen reader setting.  Also screen  readers don't tell 
you what column you are in.  (though this too is a problem that needs to be 
solved generically someday).
End GV



I understand it's not in the current set of capabilities of the
average email/screen-reader combination (to search for something that
is not something), but it's easy enough that some procmail (unix)
filter that adds begin and end marker around original text could be
implemented in no time.

GV:: This is a very interesting idea.   Hmmmm.  Sounds like an email client 
recommendation to me.  An option for a different way to mark you incoming 
emails.... Or to translate them.


So, again, it's a matter of the tool used, the information is there.

Sure, adding DD:: adds some info, but as it both requires more work
byt the author and somehow clutters the visual for sighted user, it's
in the "accessibility OR else" design that I don't really like.

GV:: hmmmm.  I find the initials very helpful myself - especially when 
there are multiple responders.  ( I also set up macros so that both the 
GV::   and the    End GV    are single keystrokes so maybe I find them 
easier than most).

Note that if we're only adding marker like DD:: at the beginning (and
the end) of original text sections, we're asking people to insert the
whole section when answering (or they lose the context).

GV:: Daniel,  could you elaborate?    I'm not sure I follow this one.

Received on Thursday, 4 December 1997 10:00:10 UTC