docbook-tc — archive

Re: [docbook-tc] acronym title?

From: System
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 15:38:00 -0000

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: [email protected] On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 08:40:29AM -0600, Michael Smith wrote: > Bob Stayton <[email protected]> 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 > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription > manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>