HowTo get docbook <acronym> elements to be in html like a real html acronym

[Claus Klein <claus.klein@arcormail.de>]

Hello!

As I was reading the article on 
http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_17_defining_acronyms.html
for me the question was:
 How can I get automatically <acronym> elements to be in HTML like a real HTML acronym, 
 e.g. <acronym title="Document Object Model">DOM</acronym> ?

Based on an acronym list like that:

HTML
DOM
...
RFC
XML
XSL
XSLT

I create with a perl script a docbook glossary from a foldoc dictionary server 
(dict.org or my local dictd) like this:

    <glossentry>
      <glossterm><anchor id="glossterm-XML"/>XML</glossterm>
      <glossdef>
        <para>
    <glossterm>Extensible Markup Language</glossterm>
        </para>
      </glossdef>
    </glossentry>
    <glossentry>
      <glossterm><anchor id="glossterm-XSL"/>XSL</glossterm>
      <glossdef>
        <para>
    <glossterm>Extensible Stylesheet Language</glossterm>
        </para>
      </glossdef>
    </glossentry>
    <glossentry>
      <glossterm><anchor id="glossterm-XSLT"/>XSLT</glossterm>
      <glossdef>
        <para>
    <glossterm>Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations</glossterm>
        </para>
      </glossdef>
    </glossentry>

and in my customization stylesheet I added this:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"; version="1.0">
<xsl:import href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/html/docbook.xsl"/>
<!--
or href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/website/current/xsl/website.xsl";
-->

  <xsl:param name="generate.acronym.link" select="'1'"/>
  <xsl:variable name="acronym.database" 
      select="document('acronym.xml')//glossary"/>
  <xsl:key name="glossary-glossentry" match="//glossentry" use="glossterm" />

<!-- ==================================================================== -->
<xsl:template match="acronym">
  <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="$generate.acronym.link != '0'">
          <xsl:call-template name="generate.acronym.link"/>
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>
      <xsl:call-template name="inline.charseq"/>
    </xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

<!-- ==================================================================== -->
  <xsl:template name="generate.acronym.link">
    <xsl:param name="acronym">
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
<!-- ###FIXME###: do I need this?
      <xsl:call-template name="anchor"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="simple.xlink">
        <xsl:with-param name="content">
          <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </xsl:with-param>
      </xsl:call-template>
-->
    </xsl:param>
<!--
      We use for-each to change context to the database document because key() 
      only locates elements in the same document as the context node!
 -->
   <xsl:param name="value" >
      <xsl:for-each select="$acronym.database">
        <xsl:value-of select="key('glossary-glossentry', $acronym)/glossdef/para/glossterm[1]" />
      </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:param>
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="$value=''">
        <!-- debug -->
        <xsl:message>
          In mystyle.xsl: For acronym (<xsl:value-of select="$acronym"/>) no value found! 
        </xsl:message>
        <a>
          <xsl:attribute name="href">
            <xsl:text>http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=</xsl:text>
	        <xsl:value-of select="$acronym"/>
          </xsl:attribute>
          <xsl:call-template name="inline.charseq"/>
        </a>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <!-- found -->
        <acronym>
          <xsl:attribute name="title">
            <xsl:value-of select="$value"/>
          </xsl:attribute>
          <xsl:call-template name="inline.charseq"/>
        </acronym>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

This works for a docbook website too and the glossary is 100% docbook, so I can reuse it as it is!

The only thing I have to do is to mark the acronyms in my docbook xml sources 
... <acronym>XSLT</acronym> ...
to get the acronym explained in my HTML documents.

The only  questionable point for me is:

<!-- ###FIXME###: do I need this?
      <xsl:call-template name="anchor"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="simple.xlink">
...
-->

Claus Klein