Re: [docbook-tc] acronym title?

[Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org>]

Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com> writes:

> [...]
> > > On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 01:11:16AM +0200, Oleg Tkachenko wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > How can I get <acronym> element to be in html like a real html
> > > > acronym, e.g. <acronym title="Document Object Model">DOM</acronym>?
> > > >  --- Oleg Tkachenko, Multiconn International, Israel
> [...]
> 
> > [And this from Norm on the DOCBOOK-APPS list:]
>  
> > There's no easy, inline way. The problem with the title attribute is that
> > it doesn't work in an I18N way (you couldn't put BIDI or Ruby in there, or
> > even other markup like <emphasis>).
> > 
> > A subelement inside acronym for this purpose doesn't seem very inviting.
> > 
> > If the acronyms are in a glossary, I suppose I'd do some fancy hackery to
> > make that work.
> > 
> > It's definitely a nice idea, but no good, general solutions spring to
> > mind.
>  
> My initial reaction was some sort of attribute on acronym
> with a title string in it.  But the DocBook acronym content model
> is pretty complex mixed content (including other
> acronyms).  As Norm points out, it is unlikely the expansion
> of the acronym would be less complex.

I also think this may be more than just an issue with acronyms. It
seems like the need to associate an acronym with its expansion or
spelled-out text isn't that different from the need to associate, say,
an inline Glossterm with a definition, or a Ulink with a description
of what it links to.

Or to go back for a moment to looking at it from the presentation
side, I think there may be a general need to link "normal text" that
gets displayed inline in a rendered document with "annotative text"
that doesn't get rendered inline, but shows up as a pop-up when you
mouse over the content it's associated with, or gets optionally
displayed "on demand" in some other way.

And even though a part of the issue may be that HTML doesn't currently
provide a way to render that kind of displayed-on-demand text without
the limitations the "title" attribute has, it seems like that current
presentation-side deficiency shouldn't prevent the DTD from providing
an element to associate acronyms and abbreviations with spelled-out
text, or maybe some kind of general "annotative text" element.

(And as no fan of Javascript, I hesitate to say this, but Javascript
does provide a way to get around the deficiencies in standard HTML and
include annotative text -- pop-ups -- in rendered HTML output without
the limitations the "title" attribute has. Javascript pop-ups can
contain anything an HTML page can, including images and links.)

[I have some more I'd like to write about this, but no time now, so
I'll try to send it another message later.]

   --Mike