- From: Sergei N. Mouraviev <moretext@infopro.spb.su>
- Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 20:17:10 +0400
- To: "Martin J. Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>
- Cc: <www-international@w3.org>
Other languages (Russian): Tel: is certainly used for Telephone (not sure about other Slavic languages). TV is used for TV:-) Again, virtually any abbreviation is ambiguous when it lacks context so we are highly subjective in our (personal) judgments. Sergei Mouraviev -----Исходное сообщение----- От: Martin J. Duerst <duerst@w3.org> Кому: Mike Brenner <mfb@spectre.mitre.org> Копия: www-international@w3.org <www-international@w3.org> Дата: 25 июня 1998 г. 20:02 Тема: Re: RE> In which languages are PHONE and TEL ambiguous >At 09:56 98/06/25 -0400, Mike Brenner wrote: >> >> Starting with English: TEL is quite ambiguous. We just started >> connecting all the cable televisions in America to the Internet. >> For forty dollars a month you can get a million bits per second >> unlimited Internet access as well as a hundred cable channels on >> the same wire. When the price gets cut down to twenty dollars, we >> are all probably going to buy this service. TEL means more >> TELEVISION than TELEPHONE in the United States. > >Just a few questions: > >Television starts with TEL, but does that mean that TEL is ambigous? >How many English speakers are saying "Let's watch TEL." or "Let's TEL."? >When we need an URI for television, there is a very obvious solution: >TV. How many people would expect it to become something else? >(well, maybe it's a bit short :-) > > > >> However, PHONE is not ambiguous in English speaking countries after >> the dialect was standardized by the movie ET in which the Extra-Terrestrial >> says the famous line: ET Phone Home. > >How many people have seen that movie? That sentence may have been very >impressive to people who watched it, but not to others. >How was that translated into other languages? How is it written in other >languages? > >And how many of the namecards you have from English-speaking >aquaintances and friends use: >Tel? >Phone? >Something else? >Nothing? > >And how would that be for namecards from non-English-speaking >countries? Would really be interesting to see such statistics. >Unfortunately, I'm traveling currently, so my own collection >of Tel 1 and phone 1 for English-speaking countries, and >several Tel and no phone for the others, is to small for >a representative sample. > > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> Here is a question: how would having a PHONE: >> distinguish between locally sending tones out of a locally >> connected modem versus requesting an external service from >> a service provider? > >The same problem appears for internet access via the TV infrastructure. >As it currently goes, a machine automatically (or semi-automatically >in some cases) decides whether it should send out some tones to >the modem even for an http: or ftp: URI. I don't think we want to >get away from that convenience. The classical use of the "TEL" URI >is to put it on your home page, somebody clicks it, and is calling >you (you might want to be very careful with putting that on your page :-). >There may of course be other uses. > >In parallel, the use of a "TV" URI will address a particular program >channel, or whatever. It should in the end (with lots of bandwith) >not have anything to do with whether you get it over a local cable >network or something else. > > >Regards, Martin. > >
Received on Thursday, 25 June 1998 12:22:17 UTC