Re: [docbook] Acronymns..

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

Rajal Shah <rajal@meshsoftware.com> writes:

> Can someone shed light on the "acronym" element in docbook?
> 
> 1. Consider the following Docbook XML:
> ============================
> <acronym>XML</acronym>
> 
> 2. The HTML Output I get
> ===================
> <span class="acronym">XML</span>
> 
> 3. I would have guessed that it would have been better to output something 
> like this in HTML:
> ================================================================
> <acronym title="eXtended Markup Language">XML</acronym>

Please test with the latest snapshot:

  http://docbook.sourceforge.net/snapshots/

We added a change back in September (after the 1.69.1 release)
that causes the HTML stylesheets to output HTML <acronym> instead
of <span class="acronym">

> Questions:
> 1. Isn't the  <acronym> element to allow for HTML acronyms element?
> 2. If so, how do you specify the "title" attribute?

You can mark up the "spelled out" content for an acronym or abbrev
using the Alt attribute, like this:

  <acronym>Emacs<alt>Emacs Makes A Computer Slow</alt></acronym>

That will cause the following to be generated in HTML output.

  <acronym class="acronym" title="Emacs Makes A Computer Slow">Emacs</acronym>

Note that the Alt element is valid as a child of Acronym and
Abbrev only in DocBook NG/5. If you want to use it in DocBook 4
instances, and want to have those instances validated correctly,
you need to put the following into the internal DTD subset for
each of the document instances in which it is used.


  <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
            "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd";
  [
  <!ENTITY % local.word.char.mix "|alt">
  ]
  >

Or create a DTD customization layer that does the same thing. Of
course replace "article" with the actual name of the root element
of the doc instance, and replace "4.4" with whatever DocBook 4
version you are actually using.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael Smith
http://sideshowbarker.net/

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