Re: [docbook-tc] acronym title?

[Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com>]

I suggest that Norm add this to the TC agenda for
February.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
Caldera International, Inc.                 fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@caldera.com

On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 08:40:29AM -0600, Michael Smith wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
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