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Posted by Marcus Stollsteimer on 02/14/06 12:00
Spartanicus wrote:
> Marcus Stollsteimer <marcus314@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [About <abbr> and <acronym>]
>
>>1. how should these elements be best used (and what is a good reason
>>for using them in the first place)?
>
> You've not told us what qualifications you would apply to consider
> something a "good" reason. The basic reason to use most markup is to
> apply structure and semantics to the content. In that sense
> abbreviations and acronyms are no different from headings and
> paragraphs.
so what about <noun>, <verb>, <number>, <palindrome> etc. These would
also help in clarifying the semantics.
> Things get shady when you start looking for real world practical
> benefits. Some speech renderers can be configured to read out title
> content for abbreviations and acronyms, but as you can imagine that
> becomes a pain if the abbreviation is used more than once and title
> content is provided every time.
Ok, I didn't think of speech renderers, that of course is some reason.
> AT speech renderers use built in lists of commonly used
> abbreviations and render them in a pre configured way, some are
> spelled out, others are expanded, regardless of whether the
> abbreviation is marked up or naked.
That's exactly what I would expect of such a program, it should know
how to pronounce "USA", "NATO" or "e.g.".
>>When the meaning of the abbreviation is not clear
>
> How would you know? whether or not *you* know the meaning of an
> abbreviation doesn't mean that a visitor will know.
Of course he might be a German who does not know half of the words on
the page... No, I think it is reasonable to assume that the visitor
knows at least abbreviations like the above examples. Or should I
really write <abbr>i.e.</abbr>, <abbr>USA</abbr> etc? What is the
common practice in using them?
>>2. what is the difference between them (or: why not always use
>><abbr>)?
>
> IIRC the XHTML 2 proposals have dropped the <acronym> element
> because of the reasoning you mentioned elsewhere in the thread: that
> acronyms are a special form of abbreviations.
that's interesting
Hi Spartanicus, thanks for your answer!
I did not consider speech renderers, that might be some argument for
using <abbr> and <acronym>. But I still am not convinced of the
usefulness of these elements:
- imo, a good speech program should know how to pronounce acronyms
(like any other word in the text). And reading out the title
attribute seems as annoying as using the expanded form in the text.
When the acronym is used in the text, it should also be pronounced in
the abbreviated form.
- a lot of browsers seem to ignore these elements anyway
- in case there is a title attribute, I still have to hit the acronym
with my mouse pointer (if I have a mouse pointer)
- they are completely useless for text browsers and printed documents
(the nice dotted line tells me it's an acronym, but I can see that
for myself)
Regards,
Marcus
--
I would have to ask the questioner. I haven't had a chance
to ask the questioners the question they've been questioning.
-- George W. Bush
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