[uf-discuss] hCalendar, geo & Operator extension

[Ben Ward]

On 3 Dec 2007, at 18:58, Scott Reynen wrote:
> On Dec 3, 2007, at 11:18 AM, Ben Ward wrote:
>
>>>                   <abbr class="geo point-20" title="+22.31119; 
>>> +89.86145">
>>>                       Rayenda, Bangladesh
>>>                   </abbr>
>>
>> There's no way that ‘+22.31119;+89.86145’ is an abbreviation of  
>> ‘Rayenda, Bangladesh’.
>
> Without commenting on the truthfulness of the statement, the above  
> syntax says the opposite: that "Rayenda, Bangladesh" is an  
> abbreviation of "+22.31119;+89.86145."  The title attribute is the  
> long form, not the abbreviation.  I don't know if this is just  
> careless language or actual confusion, but this has come up  
> multiple times and I think it's important we're all clear on what  
> the markup asserts if we're going to have a discussion about the  
> truthfulness of that assertion.

You are completely correct, not a misunderstanding on my part, I just  
wrote the wrong thing (I've been rather ill, my brain isn't joining  
all the dots in the right order at this point).

I stand by point, and I think the examples on geo-brainstorming are  
dangerous.

Premasagar, the ‘brainstorming’ pages are just that, and shouldn't be  
considered part of the specification itself. I'm sorry that our pages  
are misleading like that.

The critical part of the HTML4 spec that causes ‘Rayenda, Bangladesh’  
*not* to be an abbreviation of ‘22.31119;+89.86145’ is this:

 > “The content of the ABBR and ACRONYM elements specifies the  
abbreviated expression itself, as it
 > would normally appear in running text. The title attribute of  
these elements may be used to provide
 > the full or expanded form of the expression.”

 > “as it would normally appear in running text.”

Whilst I appreciate the HTML4 spec can be a little vague sometimes,  
in this case it's pretty clear: ABBR is not for fuzzy approximations,  
it's for abbreviated expressions. I think we've got to be really  
delicate and careful about this. Microformats prides itself on  
building technologies on top of existing standards. The abbreviation  
pattern is a neat parsing trick, but you've gotta meet the  
requirements of the underlying technology.

Regards,

Ben

For reference, the section from the HTML4 spec regarding ABBR and  
ACRONYM

> ABBR:
> Indicates an abbreviated form (e.g., WWW, HTTP, URI, Mass., etc.).
> ACRONYM:
> Indicates an acronym (e.g., WAC, radar, etc.).
>
> The ABBR and ACRONYM elements allow authors to clearly indicate  
> occurrences of abbreviations and acronyms. Western languages make  
> extensive use of acronyms such as "GmbH", "NATO", and "F.B.I.", as  
> well as abbreviations like "M.", "Inc.", "et al.", "etc.". Both  
> Chinese and Japanese use analogous abbreviation mechanisms, wherein  
> a long name is referred to subsequently with a subset of the Han  
> characters from the original occurrence. Marking up these  
> constructs provides useful information to user agents and tools  
> such as spell checkers, speech synthesizers, translation systems  
> and search-engine indexers.
>
> The content of the ABBR and ACRONYM elements specifies the  
> abbreviated expression itself, as it would normally appear in  
> running text. The title attribute of these elements may be used to  
> provide the full or expanded form of the expression.
>
> Here are some sample uses of ABBR:
>
>   <P>
>   <ABBR title="World Wide Web">WWW</ABBR>
>   <ABBR lang="fr"
>         title="Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Nationale des Chemins de Fer">
>      SNCF
>   </ABBR>
>   <ABBR lang="es" title="Do&ntilde;a">Do&ntilde;a</ABBR>
>   <ABBR title="Abbreviation">abbr.</ABBR>

> Note that abbreviations and acronyms often have idiosyncratic  
> pronunciations. For example, while "IRS" and "BBC" are typically  
> pronounced letter by letter, "NATO" and "UNESCO" are pronounced  
> phonetically. Still other abbreviated forms (e.g., "URI" and "SQL")  
> are spelled out by some people and pronounced as words by other  
> people. When necessary, authors should use style sheets to specify  
> the pronunciation of an abbreviated form.
    — http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1