

Re: ABBR and ACRONYM are for user agents not for end users

From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:49:10 +0000 (GMT)
Message-Id: <200401101049.i0AAnAR06236@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org

> present implementation of user agents (browsers).  A browser could have a
> preference which states that all ABBR and ACRONYM should be rendered in
> place of the abbreviation.  The the screen and printing would include the

I'm pretty sure that this can already be done with a user style sheet
on a full CSS2 implementation.

> 1. The expansion can only be seen on the screen not when the document is printed.
> 2. The expansion only works for the mouse not for ordinary keyboard users.
> 3. The expansion is worthless for scanning. It can only be seen if
* you hover the mouse pointer over the short hand.

These are all to do with user interface decisions made by the browser
developers; they are not implied by the standards.  They are not restricted
> 4. The browser most people use, IE for Windows, does not support ABBR
* but only ACRONYM; and even this tag is only rendered with a tool tip. The

A more serious proplem, that always comes up with ACRONYM and ABBR, is that
it is impossible to get people to agree on the difference between the two.
In England, the difference is too subtle for the general public and the
mass media and across Europe there are differences from country to
country.  Although "acronym" is a new word, originating in the 1940s, 
its meaning is also probably drifting with time and the HTML specification
doesn't define it tightly enough to establish a specific HTML meaning 
(from a de facto position: i.e., with the current specification, people
violently disagree about the meaning).
Received on Saturday, 10 January 2004 06:13:03 UTC
