Re: HTML 4.0 ACRONYM change, revision 2

again and again and again...


See what I was writing in this list, Fri, 11 July :

................
[two answers and one night further...]

What about a 'declare' attribute for acronym then ?

<!ELEMENT ACRONYM - - (%inline)*>
<!ATTLIST ACRONYM>
  declare     (declare)  #IMPLIED  -- declare but don't instantiate flag --   
  %attrs;                -- %coreattrs, %i18n, %events --
  >


We could then have declarations of widely used acronyms the first time
they are used in a document, or declarations listed in a LINKed dictionnary :

<ACRONYM declare
   id="sncf"
   lang="fr" 
   title="Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Nationale de Chemins de Fer">
   SNCF
</ACRONYM>

and then refer to them as follows :

<ACRONYM id="sncf">SNCF</ACRONYM>


Bandwidth saving, lisibility of HTML sources, multiples definition
of a single acronym, correct behaviour for older browsers, definition
of acronyms shared by many documents are thus possible.

	Ay.
..................


and some hours later :


..................
> It isn't clear to me what your plan is for sharing acronyms between
> documents. Most browsers do not support textual sharing of HTML text. Is
> that part of your proposal or do you intend to use a feature from HTML
> 4.0 or SGML?


Well, I was thinking of a large document made of many HTML files with
eavily use of acronyms. 

But before, just a comment on a few other answers on this acronym topic.
I have been told that the first <ACRONYM title="..." lang="...">HTML</ACRONYM>
is _the_ declaration of the acronym and it is then up to the browser to
understand that further strings "HTML" in the text refer to the previously
uniquely declared ACRONYM. I'm not sure that browsers would be smart
enougn to handle this, and they won't be able to handle it when there are
more than one object refered by the same acronym. Moreover, in the case
of "HTML" I could declare one ACRONYM with lang="en" and another one with
lang="fr" and switch from one to another within a bilingual documentation.
Text-oriented browsers will say HTML in any case, while speech-oriented
browsers will pronounce it in the right (natural) way.

Thus, I think that use of ACRONYM must be done all along an HTML document,
but this is tedious (especially when there are a lot of attributes used
in the first instance of an acronym). This is why I try to find a solution
to declare an acronym once, and then refer to this declaration.

A good idea would be to declare it in a dictionnary, for this dictionnary
to be linked from many HTML documents : this is what I call "sharing
acronyms between documents".

The truth is that ACRONYM is a strange companion for logical elements like EM, 
STRONG ... VAR.

ACRONYM, GLOSSARY, INDEXES, BIBENTRY.. should be defined on their own, on
a dictionnary-mecanism basis. I'm not sure we can do it for HTML 4.0.
I don't remember whether it has been already written here. But I think
it is worth to think of it.

	Ay.
.................


Browse the following threads :

[HTML 4.0 draft] (further) comments on ACRONYM
Taxonomies, Dictionaries (was Re: Foreign Words and Phrases)

and the contribution of wlkngowl@unix.asb.com (Rob)

Received on Tuesday, 30 September 1997 07:01:12 UTC