[HTML 4.0 draft] (further) comments on ACRONYM

Numerous comments have already been done here on the ACRONYM element.
It still seems to me that this element misses an attribute... But
first of all, the relevant extract from the draft :

<extracting>

  The ACRONYM element allows authors to clearly indicate a sequence 
  of characters that compose an acronym [...] 

  [...]
  Here are some sample acronym definitions: 

  <ACRONYM title="World Wide Web">WWW</ACRONYM>
  <ACRONYM 
     lang="fr" 
     title="Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Nationale de Chemins de Fer">
     SNCF
  </ACRONYM>

</>

The missing attribute should be something like 'acr' (short
for acronym, but a better choice may exist). The following
sequence of HTML code wouldn't then be interpreted as such 
by the user agent (because of the presence of the 'acr' attribute) :

  <ACRONYM
     lang="fr"
     acr="sncf"
     title="Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Nationale de Chemins de Fer">
     SNCF
  </ACRONYM>
  <ACRONYM 
     lang="fr" 
     acr="sncf2"
     title="Syst&egrave;me Naturel de Cryptologie F&eacute;roce">
     SNCF
  </ACRONYM>

and then, the following sequences of HTML code would be interpreted
as expected :

  The <ACRONYM acr="sncf"></ACRONYM> is a Society dealing with
  trains, railways, cows and trainspotting, while the <ACRONYM
  acr="sncf2"></ACRONYM> is a method for crypting documents in
  such a manner that even 1000 DEC Alphas working together during
  1000 years wouldn't been enough to decrypt the document. We will
  now deal with the <ACRONYM acr="sncf"></ACRONYM>. blah blah blah
  and oer use of the "sncf" acronym blah blah blah

Two considerations are in the previous paragraph : 1/ saving of
bandwidth when using an acronym many times througout a (bunch of)
document(s) ; 2/ distinguishing between identical acronyms referring
to diferrent objects.

The above solution is not elegant. But despite of this, I think
we still should consider the above two points.

An more elegant solution may be an acronym dictionnary obtainable via
a LINK instance, and an other tag for referencing entries in the
dictionnary. Something like :

<!ELEMENT ACROSHORT - O EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST ACROSHORT)
  acr CDATA #IMPLIED;    -- reference to an acronym dictionnary --
  %attrs;                -- %coreattrs, %i18n, %events --
  >


  The <ACROSHORT acr="sncf"> owns <ACROSHORT acr="tgv"> which are
  widely used within the <ACROSHORT acr="eec">. 




	Aymeric

Received on Thursday, 10 July 1997 10:35:20 UTC