Re: Acronyms and abbreviations revisited

to follow up on what Dave Raggett said:
> 
> Maybe for now its best to just reserve a term for linking
> abbreviation dictionaries.
> 

It is better to reserve a keyword or expression (pattern of
keywords) for linking [all kinds of] dictionaries and let the
dictionary itself declare its domain of applicability to be
expanding abbreviations.

All dictionaries are collections of entries.  Each entry binds
one short text to one or more longer texts.  The application of
these relationships [dictionary entries] should be up to the
dictionary and the application that applies them against the
document.  Not special codes in the document itself.

At one use of a word one might want to encode the equivalent of
	for <definition> use <Webster_document> select <sense #3>.

But references to dictionaries in the document should simply add
the dictionary to the context without specializing the notion of
"dictionary".

--
Al Gilman

Received on Saturday, 2 August 1997 17:26:27 UTC