E-mail List Archives

Search E-mail List Archives for

Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)

From: Moore, Michael
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2008 9:00AM
Subject: Re: Foreign:Spam?:Re: Use of abbr for the scientiifc equivalent ofavernacular name
No previous message | Next message →

On Wed, April 30, 2008 14:22, Steve Green wrote:

Please don't top-post.

> The Latin name ought to be in the page text at least once.

That's a rather sweeping statement; surely it depends on the context?

--
Andy Mabbett
** via webmail **



I'm all for taking the context into consideration. Can you suggest a
context in which an author should arbitrarily decide that information
will be made available to some users and not others?

Steve

I think that this is a very good place to use the same method as in the
print world. If including the Latin/scientific name for a plant or
animal is important to the document, place it in line in text.

For example:

"The Snow Leopard (Uncia uncia), sometimes known as the ounce, is a
large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central Asia from Afghanistan
to Lake Baikal and eastern Tibet."

Mike

From: Andy Mabbett
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2008 9:10AM
Subject: Re: Use of abbr for the scientiifc equivalent of a vernacular name
← Previous message | Next message →

On Wed, April 30, 2008 15:37, Steve Green wrote:

>>> The Latin name ought to be in the page text at least once.
>>
>> That's a rather sweeping statement; surely it depends on the context?

> I'm all for taking the context into consideration. Can you suggest a
> context in which an author should arbitrarily decide that information will
> be made available to some users and not others?

Well, I would suggest pages such as:

<http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/ladywalk/latest-2007>;

where, to prevent massive bloat, such names are held on a separate
glossary page; but in that case the decision was far from arbitrary, and
the information is still available to all.

--
Andy Mabbett
** via webmail **

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2008 11:00AM
Subject: Re: Use of abbr for the scientiifc equivalent of a vernacularname
← Previous message | Next message →

Andy Mabbett wrote:

> Can anyone see any accessibility issues with this pattern:
>
> <abbr title="Passer domesticus">House Sparrow</abbr>

The approach is fundamentally wrong, so any accessibility considerations
are of secondary importance.

But if you want to have a specifically accessibility-related argument,
in addition to the five or six arguments why the approach is just all
wrong, here's one:

The scientific name in the title attribute, though not a "Latin name" in
a genuine sense (the Latin name for the house sparrow is just "passer",
not /Passer domesticus/, the proper spelling and presentation of the
binomial scientific name), definitely consists of Latin words more than
anything else. Thus, the markup violates checkpoint 4.1 in WCAG 1.0, a
Priority 1 item:

"Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document's text
and any text equivalents (e.g., captions)."

There is no way in HTML to declare the language in an attribute as
different from the content of the element.

Moreover, the markup violates the semantics of HTML. The abbr element
means "abbreviation", and whatever _that_ is, it surely does not cover
expressions like "House Sparrow" that aren't any abbreviations. There is
no rule against grossly illogical markup in general in WCAG 1.0 (they
just tell you to "properly" mark up headers, lists, list items, and
quotations) but this is a flaw in WCAG 1.0.

> Perhaps we need a <pseudonym> element? ;-)

No, we need to stop thinking that data should be hidden in attributes.

Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

From: Peter Weil
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2008 11:50AM
Subject: Re: Use of abbr for the scientiifc equivalent of a vernacular name
← Previous message | Next message →

On Apr 30, 2008, at 7:02 AM, Andy Mabbett wrote:
>
> Can anyone see any accessibility issues with this pattern:
>
> <abbr title="Passer domesticus">House Sparrow</abbr>
>
> I suspect the former, but would like confirmation; or otherwise,
> preferably.
>
> Perhaps we need a <pseudonym> element? ;-)

"House Sparrow" is not an abbreviation. I wouldn't use the <abbr> tag
here just because it has a title attribute. In a case like this, I
would include the Latin text in the main text for all to see or hear
-- why hide it inside a tag (and the wrong tag, at that)? Few users
are going to see it there; those who hear only the expansion are
likely to be confused.

--
Peter Weil, Web Developer
University Communications
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Phone: 608-262-6538
Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

From: Andy Mabbett
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2008 3:30PM
Subject: Use of abbr for the scientific equivalent of a vernacular name
← Previous message | Next message →

In message <01e001c8aae3$48901780$0500000a@DOCENDO>, Jukka K. Korpela
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > writes

>(the Latin name for the house sparrow is just "passer", not /Passer
>domesticus/, the proper spelling and presentation of the binomial
>scientific name)

It's not often I get to tell you you're talking complete rubbish; but
this is one such occasion.

The House Sparrow is Passer domesticus.

The Tree Sparrow is (oddly) Passer montanus.

Both species - along with others - are members of the *genus* Passer.

> definitely consists of Latin words more than anything else. Thus, the
>markup violates checkpoint 4.1 in WCAG 1.0, a Priority 1 item:

And this is another, since /Scientific names/ (*not* Latin names) are
not true Latin at all (per alvestrand URL, below).

(That said; I have discussed the need for a (pesduo-) language code for
scientific names previously, at length, elsewhere:

<http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2003-February/000574.html>;

The lack of such is one of the things that lead me to propose the
"species" microformat:

<http://microformats.org/wiki/species>; )

--
Andy Mabbett
Says "NO! to compulsory UK ID Cards": <http://www.no2id.net/>;
and: "Free Our Data": <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk>;
(both also on Facebook)

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Wed, Apr 30 2008 4:30PM
Subject: Re: Use of abbr for the scientific equivalent of a vernacularname
← Previous message | No next message

Andy Mabbett wrote:

> In message <01e001c8aae3$48901780$0500000a@DOCENDO>, Jukka K. Korpela
> < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > writes
>
>> (the Latin name for the house sparrow is just "passer", not /Passer
>> domesticus/, the proper spelling and presentation of the binomial
>> scientific name)
>
> It's not often I get to tell you you're talking complete rubbish; but
> this is one such occasion.

It isn't. You're making the common mistake of confusing scientific names
with Latin names. Oddly enough, you seem to recognize the difference but
fail to draw the conclusions.

> And this is another, since /Scientific names/ (*not* Latin names) are
> not true Latin at all (per alvestrand URL, below).

Alvestrand URLs are irrelevant. The point is that to the extent that
scientific names are in a human language at all, and I claim they are,
they consist of Latin words. About half of them are Latin, almost half
of them are Latinized Greek (and what _do_ you mark them up as if not
Latin - English?), and the rest is Latinized something-else.

> The lack of such is one of the things that lead me to propose the
> "species" microformat:

That's irrelevant to accessibility. The point is that you inevitably
declare "Passer domesticus" as Latin, English, something else, or you
don't declare it as being in any human language. Only of these choices
is correct.

Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/