Re: [HTML 4.0 draft] (further) comments on ACRONYM

At 2:35 PM -0000 7/10/97, Aymeric Poulain Maubant wrote:

>The above solution is not elegant. But despite of this, I think
>we still should consider the above two points.
No it is not.  It is yucky.  For browsers that are not yet fully your-idea
compliant (ie, NONE OF THEM), the acronym would not show up at all.  And
even if Netscape and Internet Explorer leaped to create a new version that
did implement it, most users wouldn't rush to download it.

As far as I understand it, ACRONYM is a logical entity, ie, one which says,
"the text between me tags is an acronym.  Render it how you like."  Thus,
the content of the entity *must* be an actual acronym.  I think an elegant
solution is:

<P>Perhaps one of the most ironic things about <ACRONYM TITLE="HyperText
Markup Language>HTML</ACRONYM>, or <DFN>HyperText Markup Language</DFN> is
that although its purpose is often described as providing a visual,
graphical interface to the Internet, when in fact HTML is a structural
language which is meant to contain little or no visual information at all.

The ACRONYM attribute is thus used for the defining instance of the term.
After that, it's up to the viewer to remember the acronyms.  Heck, it's
what I had to do whenever they came up in class.

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[                    Jordan Reiter                     ]
[            mailto:jreiter@mail.slc.edu               ]
[ "You can't just say, 'I don't want to get involved.' ]
[  The universe got you involved."  --Hal Lipset, P.I. ]
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Received on Friday, 11 July 1997 03:35:06 UTC