Re: Acronyms and Abbreviations?

On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Al Gilman wrote:

>> The ACRONYM element would be used together with the TITLE
>> attribute to specify the expanded name. 
> 
> First, that misses the requirement.  The pronunciation of NCIL is
> "nickel."  That is not a TITLE.  Acronyms need a more complex
> lexicographical record than is afforded by one TITLE attribute.

The suggestion is that TITLE would be used for the full name, e.g.
MIT becomes "Massachussetts Institute of Technology". For
pronunciation I have been arguing for a new attribute, for encoding
phonemic and prosodic info. This is still at an early stage of
discussion though.

>> What do members of this group think?
>   
> Both "acronym" and "abbreviation" are too narrow to capture the
> true requirement.  There is a general requirement to be able
> to annotate words with lexicographical expansions.  These
> should be distinguished from navigation tags as a different
> class of navigand.

The people I have been talking to don't consider acronym and
abbreviation as navigation elements. Rather they are there
for people to find the expanded form, and as an aid to user
agents to speak the phrase reasonably.

> The requirement that I have come across repeately in working
> across engineering sub-domains is the ability for the page author
> to make explicit to the dictionary service at the client side
> which of various extant meanings a given lexical graph is to
> mean.  Consider it a <jargon> requirment.  It means, "In this
> place, this term must be interpreted in accordance with [value or
> reference to] definition."  This would provide the capability to
> link to preferred pronunciations of acronyms, etc.

TITLE as used for tool tips or balloon help is intended in a rough
sense to be used in this way. That is as a means for people to
clarify the intended purpose/meaning.

Regards,

Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>

tel +44 122 578 252 url http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Monday, 9 June 1997 13:38:50 UTC