- From: Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org>
- Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 12:00:31 -0500
- To: "Simon Pieters" <zcorpan@hotmail.com>, Rob.Simpson@BlackBox.com
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
At 3:22 PM +0000 3/24/06, Simon Pieters wrote: > >What's wrong with: > > <p>The <dfn>tiger</dfn>, <span xml:lang="la">Panthera >tigris</span>, is a large, striped Asian felid.</p> A: as a meme, a markup pattern: 1. You don't know what constitutes the definiens. Does the latin name define 'tiger'? or the whole <p>? Or an enclosing <div>? For the purposes of processing this text to assist anyone having difficulty with the term 'tiger,' I believe that you need to know that "Panthera tigris" is not just "in Latin" but that it fulfills the role of "scientific name" or "unique name" of the "species" that you wish to be the concept bound to the term 'tiger.' 2. There's no greased path to better information. This is the major web sin. The first meme of the web is reference by URI. Terminology (knowledge) is a network. Plug into the network. For example, replace the <span> with a <q> and you get an @cite attribute: <q xml:lang="la" cite="http://www.bigcats.org/abc/catspecies/species.html">Panthera tigris</q> B: as an instance, use case or test case: 1. You don't need it. This fragment purports to give a definition for 'tiger' whereas looking in any commonly-used English dictionary for 'tiger' would give you a better explanation than this. 2. No reading-level reduction in definiens. It purports to explain a commonly-understood term in terms of arcana. In other words, if you need a term in the glossary, it is 'felid' and not 'tiger.' To explain the term 'felid' you may use the term 'tiger.' To explain the term 'tiger,' you need a picture, a sound file, a link to "Little Black Sambo." 3. See also The problem in the large: http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/usage/languageUsageAndAccess.html Baby steps we should be taking to address this problem: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20060117/Overview.html#meaning-idioms Is this a job for microformats? http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2006Mar/0001.html Al >...? > >Regards, >Simon Pieters
Received on Friday, 24 March 2006 17:00:45 UTC