RE: ABBR vs. ACRONYM

Hi Phill and all,

A reason to maintain the difference between the acronym and the abbreviation
has already given it Gregory J. Rosmaita:

"as a speech user, i personally would probably choose to have the TITLE for
any ABBR defined for a page spoken, while leaving anything marked up as an
ACRONYM in its compact form, so that, if i were confused as to what a
particular acronym meant, i could use a screen review command to have the
TITLE associated with the ACRONYM announced...  others might configure
their systems in the opposite manner (ignore ABBR but expand ACRONYM) while
others might prefer that both be automatically expanded or that both be
read in their compact form... "

And as for the users that don't use a screen reader it is useful that when
they placing the pointer of the mouse on the acronym they can read their
definition (Like it happens with IE). Would it be convenient that it
happened the same thing with the abbreviations? Maybe, mainly for the
readers that don't have a deep knowledge of the language in that the page is
edited, for example.

regards,
Emmanuelle
----- Original Message -----
From: <pjenkins@us.ibm.com>
To: WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 9:17 PM
Subject: 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 19:24:33 UTC