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Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 02/12/06 23:26
Gérard Talbot <newsblahgroup@gtalbot.org> wrote:
> How about
> <dfn><abbr title="Abbreviation">abbr</abbr> (Abbreviation)</dfn>
> then?
The use of <dfn> might be regarded as adequate, since an abbreviation
can be understood as a term and its expansion as the defining
expression. But you would need to take precautions against the default
rendering of <dfn> unless you really want to get it. This mainly means
dfn { font-style: normal; }
The use of <abbr> is questionable due to its obscure definition and
varying interpretations. For example, it has been suggested that a
browser should present an <abbr> element by rendering its title
attribute.
> WHAT's Web Applications 1.0 gives examples of such:
Oh my. They are really trying to make the elements worse than useless.
For one thing, they say: "If the dfn element has a title attribute,
then the exact value of that attribute is the term being defined."
In your example, this means that "Abbreviation" is the _term_.
They're also saying: "There must only be one dfn element per document
for each term defined." That's an arbitrary restriction. It is rather
common to present _different_ definitions for the same term in one
document, e.g. a simple definition and a more exact (and perhaps more
formal) one, or competing definitions.
They suggest artificial complications but do not give any answer to the
fundamental question: which markup would I use for a _definition_ (as
opposite to just flagging the _term_ being defined)?
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html
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