[uf-discuss] abbr with empty or no title (was: Re: marking up initials in names)

[Andy Mabbett]

In message
<21e770780801011752l3923bafar172491e7d78e9feb at mail.gmail.com>, Brian
Suda <brian.suda at gmail.com> writes

>On 01/01/2008, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>> In message <m2k5muvj65.fsf at gmail.com>, Edward O'Connor
>> >How about <abbr> without @title?
>> ...
>> which Operator handles (plaudits due!) but for which X2V returns null values.
>
>The current mark-up is:
><abbr class="fn" title="">Fred</abbr>
>The user has explicitly said that the value of the ABBR is blank, so
>this is what X2V is pulling as the value of FN.

Per my subsequent, and more detailed, notes at:

        <http://microformats.org/wiki/abbr-design-pattern-issues#Issues>


    *   How are empty (title="") title attributes to be parsed? At the
        time of writing, X2V returns a null value; Operator uses the
        content of the abbr element. Such mark-up is valid, but
        semantically illogical. The former parser behaviour seems the
        most logical, but results in an invalid vCard.

    *   How are missing title attributes to be parsed? This is both
        valid and semantically-meaningful mark-up (the content is an
        abbreviation, but we know not of what). At the time of writing,
        X2V and Operator both use the content of the abbr element; this
        seems sensible, and should, perhaps, be ratified in the spec.

See:
        <http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/test>

for examples.


>We can discuss if is to correct to "help" the user, or to take what is
>explicitly been encoded no matter how silly it may seem?

Indeed. We could also declare that:

        <abbr class="[microformat-class]" title="">

in a microformat renders that microformat invalid, and that parsers
should generate an error message.

What I hope we all agree that we should not do, is to continue to have
different behaviour from the two leading parsers!

-- 
Andy Mabbett