[microformats-discuss] abbr-design-pattern

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 10/10/05 2:30 PM, "David Janes -- BlogMatrix" <davidjanes at blogmatrix.com>
wrote:

> Got it. I'll use this argument to fill in the page a little more later on.
> 
> However, let me toss out the argument here that ABBR does not hide data
> -- it's available as a mouseover popup.

It's not absolutely hidden no.

But it is *more* hidden, which is *less* desirable.

In addition, it violates the DRY principle.

We should only be violating the DRY principle when required to do so to
satisfy a more important principle, e.g. humans first, machines second.


> Furthermore, the use of ABBR for
> exanding simple presentation forms is entirely with the spirit and
> letter of the HTML spec [1]
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#edef-ABBR

Yes on expanding simple presentation forms for abbreviations etc. where no
additional information is being given.


> for ABBR to do the (2) form below.

No. Re-read what I wrote.  (2) is not "expanding simple presentation forms".
(2) is introducing additional information, namely, the last name.

Regards,

Tantek


> Tantek Çelik wrote:
>>> (2) using ABBR to encode more formal human data around something less formal
>>> 
>>> <abbr class="author" title="Danny Ayers">Danny</abbr>
>>> 
>>> I think Tantek is arguing that (1) is good and (2) is not (?).
>> 
>> 
>> That's correct.
>> 
>> (1) is a case of the same information being written differently.
>> 
>> (2) is a case of *more* information being invisibly present, namely, the
>> last name in this case.
>> 
>> If someone is not willing to make some information visible, then we
>> shouldn't be encouraging them to store that information invisibly, for all
>> the same reasons that invisible metadata is bad/futile in the first place.
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