docbook-tc — archive

[Michael Smith]

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