Re: abbr and acronym

On 1 Apr 2007, at 01:41, Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote:

>> <span read="u s">US</span>
>> <span read="United States">US</span>
>> <span read="ohms">&Omega;</span>
>
> I think the 'read' attribute is an excellent suggestion, and while  
> it definately has its uses outside of abbreviations, I think we  
> should keep <abbr> or introduce <short> to be able to mark up  
> shortened text with an expanded 'title' attribute (which should be  
> defined in the specification as such) and a pronouncation attribute  
> 'read', as suggested. +1.

Two comments:

I use <ssml:phoneme> elements in personal documents, which are  
manipulated with XSLT before being sent to a speech engine, one  
option is to use something compatible with that.  (I use alphabets of  
'ipa', 'x-apple-macintalk' and 'x-cepstral-swift' and different XSLTs  
for targeting different synthesisers; pinching the element would  
require both the @alphabet and @ph attributes.)

Also "read" has the problem of not knowing what tense it is (could be  
homophonous with reed or red). May I suggest "pronounce" as an  
alternative attribute name?

- Nicholas.