- From: Kjetil Kjernsmo <kjetil.kjernsmo@astro.uio.no>
- Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 17:57:34 +0200 (MET DST)
- To: www-html@w3.org
Dear all, I must admit that the HTML4.01 PR caught me by surprise, I had for long had an issue in my mind but had not expected an update to the spec for some time. I hope it is something that may taken into account as a minor change. What I call for, is an elaboration of the distinction between ABBR and ACRONYM in the spec. The distinction is not that clear in all languages, in Norway, we would in most cases not make a clear distinction, everything is "forkortelser" to us. After having been bothered about this for some time, I asked around on various news groups and mailing lists (not here, however), and it became very clear that the distinction is not clear at all to quite a few native English speakers as well, and that there is substantial confusion as to the use of these two elements. The discussion that was here in Febrary 1998 didn't help me much, nor do the previous discussions here or on other lists, and it sure doesn't help all the other people being confused who will not search list archives, I'm hoping (and I'm pretty sure) I'm not the only one being stupid here.... :-) Remember, the spec will not only be read by native English speakers, but also by a lot of people elsewhere. Another issue is not only what has been said in the spec about some abbrevations/acronym being spoken letter by letter on some read out, there is also a concern that at least in Norwegian, som acronyms (?) like "f.eks." which expands to "for eksempel" (you guess what it means in English :-) ) would _always_ be expanded when read out, while many abbrevations would very seldomly be expanded. If this is an issue that should be addressed by I stylesheet or by the markup language, I don't know, but it should be addressed. Best, Kjetil -- Kjetil Kjernsmo Graduate astronomy-student Problems worthy of attack University of Oslo, Norway Prove their worth by hitting back E-mail: kjetikj@astro.uio.no - Piet Hein Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/> Webmaster@skepsis.no
Received on Monday, 4 October 1999 11:57:51 UTC