Re: Acronyms and abbreviations revisited

Jason wrote:
> I agree that the HTML specification is not a suitable location for
> describing the preferred dictionary file format and that the issue should
> be treated separately. Would it be best to develop an "abbreviation
> dictionary" specification specifically for this purpose, as a separate
> document, which could perhaps be included on one of the W3C pages that
> deals with markup?

It could. I don't know exactly how W3C expect to deal with the
proliferation of new XML DTD or DTD-like proposals in the future.

> I would still maintain the importance of defining the dictionary file
> format, and of doing so before the concept of an abbreviation dictionary
> is widely implemented so that there is little opportunity for divergent
> standards and incompatibilities to arise.

It is important, but it's hard to prioritize it against others, like,
say, micropayment information format, or chemical molecule
representation. 
 
> Abbreviation dictionaries are likely to be relatively small, and require
> only two fields per entry: one for the abbreviation and the other for its
> expansion. Thus, the file format would be relatively simple, and I would
> suggest using an HTML document for several reasons. Firstly, it can easily
> be created using any HTML authoring tool or text editor. Secondly, the
> markup for language identification and the full ISO 10646 character set
> would be available, as is necessary in a truly international context.
> Thirdly, HTML provides a simple mechanism, namely the definition list,
> whereby abbreviations and their expanded forms can be listed.
 
True, but one could argue that it is a perfect application for XML,
where you could define a more semantically richer set of tags, using a
small DTD with things like <ABBREV> and <EXPAN>.

Anyway, I'll bring it up in the HTML forum.

Received on Thursday, 17 July 1997 12:03:00 UTC