RE: ABBR vs. ACRONYM

Gregory you took my

quote
If nothing does or nothing should happen with ABBR, then why mark it up?
unquote

out of context.  I was replying to what Emmanuelle said happened between
ABBR and ACRONYN in Internet Explorer. You also seemed to ignore the second
half of the statement

quote
If ... nothing should happen with ABBR, then ...
unquote

meaning, if the browser SHOULD NOT do any expanding because of ABBR, then
why mark it up.  Emmanuelle seemed to be agreeing that it should not be
expanded.  I was asking Emmanuelle to confirm.  You both seem to be asking
that the user should get to choose.  I wasn't making a point that it should
or it shouldn't, just asking that if she(?) thought it shouldn't, then what
was the purpose of the markup?  All four or five groups need to be on the
same page about the purpose and behavior of ELEMENTS.  The author, the tool
developer, the browser developer, the assitive technology developer, and
the user all need [most do] understand the difference between OL and UL.
If one set of authors want to expand ABBR and the other set of users do NOT
want to expand it, then what are the developers in between to do?  At least
one, IE,  has chosen to expand one and not the other,  others haven't got
to it yet.


Myself and developers * are * for doing things now that will have an impact
in the future. That's the very definition of a developer. The question each
developer ask herself is what will be the impact and how much will we have
to invest to achieve the impact.  Sometimes our priorities are right on and
sometimes we miss.  Developers need to have room to compete on
implementation of the open standards.  In the case of ABBR and ACRONYN it
could be on how they provide the expanded, whether they give the user any
control, whether the default is the best for some large population, etc.

borrowing from David Clark:
There are more critical issues that we need to come to consensus on.  To
their indented audience, I believe that ABBR and ACRONYM are primarily
usability, linguistics, and international language concerns, and not
technical accessibility.  If it is not understandable in its context, it is
equally as ununderstandable to everybody.  From an accessibility point of
view, access to interactive JavaScript is more pressing than ABBR and
ACRONYM.  From and international understandability point of view,  I would
choose the opposite.

I may not be at CSUN, but either way I'll let this sit for a month.

Regards,
Phill Jenkins

Received on Wednesday, 23 February 2000 11:30:57 UTC