Re: Acronyms in HTML

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 12:47:42 +0200
> From: Alper Ersoy <address@hidden>
> 
> Karl, maybe we should add an optional parameter to @acronym{}?
> Say:
> 
>   @acronym{HTML, HyperText Markup Language}
> 
> Becomes:
> 
>   <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>
> 
> so visual agents will display a tooltip when hovered.  TeX and Info
> backends should show a footnote.  Docbook will use MoreInfo attribute
> instead of the above title.
> 
> All subsequent uses of @acronym{HTML} will then use the same title.
> @acronym{HTML, A new definition} will redefine it.

I think this is a good idea, but IMHO it needs more work.  Here's why.

It is customary to say something like

    @acronym{SWORD} (an acronym for System With Objects for Rapid
    Development) is a set of address@hidden classes that provide the
    developer with a portable development environment.

and then continue using the acronym without its expansion, like this:

    @acronym{SWORD} classes cover subject such as building graphical
    user interface, date/time, files, network (socket client and
    server), strings, random numbers, vectors and matrices.

Under this new extension of @acronym, I suppose I could change the
first paragraph to

    @acronym{SWORD, an acronym for System With Objects for Rapid
    Development} is a set of address@hidden classes that provide the
    developer with a portable development environment.

But I certainly wouldn't want this same footnote to be generated in
all the other places where I use this acronym: if nothing else, this
would be ugly, e.g. imagine a page where this acronym is used 5 times.

So reusing the same title in all the other places with no explicit
title seems to be not a good idea, at least not in TeX and Info
formats.  (HTML is okay, since the title is not shown unless the mouse
hovers above the acronym; don't know enough about the other formats to
tell.)

There's also a problem with ``subsequent uses''.  A Texinfo document
does not need to be written in the order that a browser displays it.
This means that it is quite possible that the first place in the
source where you use @acronym is not the first place where the reader
will see it.  (The same can happen if you want to defer the
explanation of the acronym to some later section, for purely didactic
reasons.)  In these situations, the author will wish to control where
the footnote will be generated and where it won't.  I think we should
let the author specify that somehow.  (Of course, if we only generate
the footnote where there's a title argument to @acronym, this issue
goes away automagically ;-)