Re: New pseudoclass, :first-use

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Maury Markowitz wrote:
> GAME:first-use { font: italic 150% sans-serif }

I use DFN in the same way, and usually the DFN is indeed the first
occurrence of some term, but not always. Sometimes I use a term twice in
the same paragraph and only the second one should have the DFN.

    "Next we describe wuzmagigles. A <dfn>wuzmagigle</dfn> is..."

There are also documents that have a glossary at the end, for example.

Another problem is that you try to use the style sheet to add semantics
that should have been in the document itself. I'd like to be able to
recognize defining instances without looking at how they are formatted
(e.g., for an automatically generated alphabetical index.)

In practice, definitions are most useful if the instances link back to
them. But I found that it is hard to automatically match up occurences of
a term. I could invent a class name for every term (as in your
example), but that leads to an explosion of class names and a lot of work 
to type all of them.

For example, I often find myself writing things like:

    "A <dfn>parent element</dfn> is an element that..."

    "Elements inherit from their <em>parent elements</em>..."

Note the plural -s.

    "The <dfn>content of a box</dfn> is..."

    "Every <em>box's content</em> must..."

My solution usually is either to create links "by hand" or to add a TITLE
attribute with the "canonical form" of the term, and then have a program
match up the TITLEs rather than the actual text.

With a good hypertext editor (I use Amaya) both methods aren't too hard.
"By hand" is actually a matter of point and click.


Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos/                              W3C/INRIA
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Saturday, 26 August 2000 08:44:58 UTC