please use titles, not addresses, as link text

HTML, XML Schema editors,

Please don't use the URI-in-your-face idiom
	<a href="http://...spec-addr">http://...spec-addr</a>
in references sections of W3C tech reports. Please use:

	<a href="http://...spec-addr"><cite>spec-title</cite></a>

instead.

To see this in action, see the references section of
"Web Architecture: Extensible Languages"
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-webarch-extlang-19980210#Related

If the document has an institutionalized identifier (e.g. in
the case of W3C tech reports, which bear their identifier on their
title page) you may want to include it in the citation ala:
	<small><tt>http://...spec-addr</tt></small>
But don't do that for just any old document available on the web...
If you want to force hardcopies of your tech report made by broken
tools to include the addresses of a document you're citing, but that
document
doesn't bear its address, or isn't published on the web
by the original publisher, use the
	Available at: ...
idiom; e.g.

ISO 8601 
     ISO (International Organization for Standardization).
Representations
	of dates and times, 1988-06-15. Available at:
	http://www.iso.ch/markete/8601.pdf 




Janet, Ian, and w3t-comm folks, please train editors to do this if you
find time.

Hmm... this was documented at/near
http://www.w3.org/Guide/Reports#references
at one time, but I don't see it there any more.

See also:

in-your-face URLs: please don't. Dan Connolly (Thu, Aug 12 1999) 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-wcag-editor/1999JulSep/0027.html

-- 
Dan Connolly
tel:+1-512-310-2971
http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 10 February 2000 17:34:08 UTC