RE: ABBR vs. ACRONYM

Emmanuelle wrote:
>I believe that none of both should be eliminated. In Spanish the
distinction
>between acronym and abbreviation is very clear. ...
>
>... in Internet Explorer when in a page there is an
>identified acronym as such, if the pointer of the mouse is placed on him
its
>definition it can be read, that which doesn't happen with the
abbreviations.
>And this is logical because the abbreviations are of common use in a
>language, ...

PJ:
If nothing does or nothing should happen with ABBR, then why mark it up?
If the user agent should expand it [at the users request], just like
ACRONYM, then why have both? Perhaps it doesn't matter if both are treated
the same by being expanded, even thought to some they are different things.
If your point is that they should be treated differently, then how?  If the
difference is that one should be expanded and the other not, then we are
back to my argument that it should not be marked-up. I don't know of any
ELEMENTS that are treated the same, at least none that haven't been
deprecated,  Many deprecated duplicate elements are still supported anyway,
just no guarantees.

Since user agent manufactures will maintain some backward compatibility and
continue to handle both - who cares if we deprecate one?  We're not solving
a problem by deprecating one or the other are we?

I'm O.K. with having both even though they should / will be expanded the
same by compliant browsers.

What ABBR and ACRONYM - are - is not important in this context.  How they
are specified to be treated is the important part.  I might want a list of
them, I might want them expanded in different languages, I might want them
highlighted per my style sheet, etc.  The user agent should let me do all
these things to both of them.  Is there an argument that they should in
fact be treated inherently different by the user agent?

Regards,
Phill Jenkins

Received on Tuesday, 22 February 2000 15:24:30 UTC