MS WEFT and i18n

[Alan J. Flavell]

OK, I guess I'm about ready to expose this page for public discussion:
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...i18n-weft.html

Please concentrate on the content. I'm well aware that my old
stylesheet is in need of modernisation, but this isn't the moment
to get sidetracked by that.

If anyone is previewing IE7 (which I am not), they might care to
comment on whether anything has been done to address the problem in
IE(<=6) where it'll choose a font that implements only a portion of a
particular repertoire, and then makes no attempt to find the missing
characters from anywhere else.

Thanks

--

[Jim Moe]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

OK, I guess I'm about ready to expose this page for public discussion:
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...i18n-weft.html

In no particular order:
- You have <abbr> for a seemingly random collection of abbreviations and
acronyms. In the first paragraph what are: MS, WEFT, W3C, CSS, WinMSIE?
- The body font changes size for no observable reason.
Perhaps those are footnote-ish paragraphs? If so, why not make them a
footnote? Or a sidebar (float:right)?
- You have an over-fondness for commas. And sentences that run on and on.
- Since you have declared lang=en_GB, just go with GB spelling. E.g.
change "internationali[sz]ation" to "internationalisation". You have done
so elsewhere.
- "Symbol-type fonts": As in the fontface known as Symbol which usually
provides a Greek alphabet subset?
- Change "This is sheer dishonest" to "This is sheer dishonesty".
- <dfn> for "repertoire" would be handy to place it in context.
- Since the main topic of the page is using WEFT to encode web pages, you
might emphasize that at the *beginning* of the introduction, not the end.
Most of the intro is a historical rant about workarounds for old browsers
and really should go into a footnote or sidebar.
- The "Recap" would be better placed as part of the intro ("Tell them what
you are going to tell them").
- "WEFT3" suddenly sprang into existence. Version 3? What is its advantage
over 1 or 2?
- "MORE DETAIL NEEDED HERE" - Oops?

- Use a strict DTD.
- IE does not recognize <abbr> as a valid element. Replace it with
<acronym>. The following prevents decoration when the page is printed:
@media print { abbr, acronym { border: none; } }

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005, Jim Moe wrote:

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

OK, I guess I'm about ready to expose this page for public discussion:
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...i18n-weft.html
In no particular order:

Well, as I said, I was hoping for comment on the substantive content,
rather than on details of the presentation; but, this is usenet, so
thank you for your detailed analysis of what mostly seem to be
presentation detail. I'll try to respond accordingly.
- You have <abbr> for a seemingly random collection of abbreviations
and acronyms. In the first paragraph what are: MS, WEFT, W3C, CSS,
WinMSIE?
Noted. My assumption was that anyone in a position to apply this page
to their authoring would understand those terms without explanation,
except perhaps for "MS WEFT" - which is linked to MS's own web page
where it's introduced and explained. I've only annotated the ones
which I thought called for some special note.
- The body font changes size for no observable reason.
I have a long-standing practice of using <small> as a stand-in for
the missing HTML de-emphasis markup. It seems you don't accept this
convention.
Perhaps those are footnote-ish paragraphs?
It's a point of view, certainly; but it wasn't really what I had in
mind at the time.
If so, why not make them a footnote? Or a sidebar (float:right)?
I'll give it some thought...
- You have an over-fondness for commas. And sentences that run on and on.
It's a first cut, and maybe can be tidied up after the substantive
content has been addressed.
- Since you have declared lang=en_GB, just go with GB spelling. E.g.
change "internationali[sz]ation" to "internationalisation".
Point taken, but AIUI the spelling discrepancy was one of the original
motivations for devising the term "i18n", so I thought I'd retain that
for the <abbr>, at least.
- "Symbol-type fonts": As in the fontface known as Symbol which
usually provides a Greek alphabet subset?
That's only one example of a Symbol-type font (in the narrow sense):
others would be Dingbats, Wingdings etc., all of which are marked as
"Symbol" type fonts in their font data...

I try also to explain there what I mean by "symbol type fonts in the
broad sense" - even those which are not marked explicitly as "Symbol"
in their font data. It seems I didn't succeed yet - do you have a
constructive proposal, pleaase?
- <dfn> for "repertoire" would be handy to place it in context.
Thanks, I'll give that some thought.
- Since the main topic of the page is using WEFT to encode web pages,
I'd have to categorise that as a slight misunderstanding: in the usage
which I'm promoting here, the encoding would be standard W3C HTML
encoding - the use of WEFT is an optional additional feature to help
MSIE out, particularly when its user has inadequate fonts installed.

The use of non-standard encodings (which is another way of expressing
what happens when symbol-type fonts are used) is what I am
deprecating.

Again, some concrete proposal of how to express this clearly, if what
I have written is unclear, would be welcome.
you might emphasize that at the *beginning* of the introduction, not
the end.
It's in the third paragraph (which is now the second): it seemed to me
that it was necessary to set the context first. For any reader who's
already sensitive to the issues, I'd also expect the title to be
informative. I'll re-think this part, though.
Most of the intro is a historical rant about workarounds for old
browsers and really should go into a footnote or sidebar.
I'll give that some thought too...
- The "Recap" would be better placed as part of the intro ("Tell
them what you are going to tell them").
It's a point of view, but it seemed to me to be useful to summarise
where we'd got to at that stage. I'll defer to any other comments
that may appear from others on this, but, for the time being, with
respect, I think I'll stay with the structure that I've got.
- "WEFT3" suddenly sprang into existence. Version 3? What is its
advantage over 1 or 2?
No idea - I've never tried another version.
- "MORE DETAIL NEEDED HERE" - Oops?
It's a first cut, for discussion. Feel free to discuss whether you
think more detail is needed, or whether the limitations of that
feature mean that it's best to draw a line under it and go back to the
page-analysis method.
- Use a strict DTD.
Well, the page almost *was* strict, so now I've done that, "just for
you", but the stylesheet is more urgently in need of modernisation
anyway, so I think that the HTML DOCTYPE was kindof trivial in
comparison...

I'm more interested in comments on the substantive content. I already
have a stack of ideas on modernising the stylesheet, but haven't yet
implemented any of them.
- IE does not recognize <abbr> as a valid element.
I know. Pathetic, isn't it?
Replace it with <acronym>.
If I had been marking-up an acronym (in the strict sense of that
term), I would have already done so. As I was not(*), I refuse. I
have now applied an alternative workaround for this, though.

(*) I learned to read the abbreviation for Broken As Designed as the
letters B A D, not as the word "bad". However, if someone else reads
this bit as "bad", then it's OK by me...
The following prevents decoration when the page is printed:
@media print { abbr, acronym { border: none; } }

As I said, the stylesheet will be attended to, some time, but not
right now.

Thanks.

Further comments, preferably focussing on the substantive content, are
still very welcome. Ta.

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Alan J. Flavell wrote:

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005, Jim Moe wrote, about:

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...i18n-weft.html

Most of the intro is a historical rant about workarounds for old
browsers and really should go into a footnote or sidebar.

I'll give that some thought too...

I think I've now addressed that criticism in a better way. The
detailed discussion has been delegated to my fontface-harmful page,
and is now cross-referenced via an id= anchor from the i18n-weft page,
with only a summary of the detailed presentation in the weft page.

In my opinion, the result is now much better in relation to your
specific criticism - I hope you agree.

By the way, if you're about to complain that the fontface-harmful page
also ought to use a Strict DOCTYPE, then the answer is that it
contains some demonstrations of the use of <font face=...> , which
makes that non-feasible.

regards

[Jim Moe]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

- The body font changes size for no observable reason.
I have a long-standing practice of using <small> as a stand-in for
the missing HTML de-emphasis markup. It seems you don't accept this
convention.

I am not familiar with the idiosyncrasies of your style. I randomly
sampled some of your web pages (10 or so) and saw not a single instance of
this practice.
It is not the I do not accept it, I simply thought it was a layout error.
Nor do I understand the purpose of the de-emphasis. Is it an aside? A
footnote? A sidebar? Supplemental information? All of these things are not
normally part of the main flow.
Further comments, preferably focussing on the substantive content, are
still very welcome.

I doubt that a newsgroup focusing on HTML authoring is the place for a
peer review of an article about a CSS-enabled Microsoft-specific technology.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
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[Alan J. Flavell]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Jim Moe wrote:

Further comments, preferably focussing on the substantive content,
are still very welcome.

I doubt that a newsgroup focusing on HTML authoring is the place
for a peer review of an article about a CSS-enabled
Microsoft-specific technology.

Then I guess I owe you some kind of explanation for choosing this
group, namely for the page's intended audience (HTML authors) rather
than for the topic which it covers.

The technique is offered to HTML authors as an option which in no way
requires them to violate HTML interworking standards, but may be of
assistance to their MSIE-using readers in a range of situations where
the default behaviour of that browser-like object is inadequate.

True, it incidentally uses a construct from CSS/2.0, but it otherwise
doesn't seem to me to be a discussion which could usefully be extended
to the CSS (stylesheets) usenet group. If you disagree, I'm open to
persuasion.

thanks

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Jim Moe wrote:

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

- The body font changes size for no observable reason.

I have a long-standing practice of using <small> as a stand-in for
the missing HTML de-emphasis markup. It seems you don't accept this
convention.

I am not familiar with the idiosyncrasies of your style.

I must admit that I hadn't considered it to be personal or
idisyncratic: it's a fairly common typographic convention in printed
materials, in my experience, and I had kind-of assumed that it would
be intuitively acceptable to readers. I'd welcome comments from
others on this question before deciding whether I was misguided in my
assumption.

If I look for the term de(-)emphasis in appropriate contexts, I find
http://style.cleverchimp.com/font_size/livetext.html

Jukka Korpela also considers <small> as a respectable-ish candidate
for de-emphasis markup, although, like you, he tends to recommend
moving the de-emphasized material out of line:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/HTML3.2/4.5.html

Unfortunately there is no phrase element for "de-emphasis", i.e. for
indicating segments of text as less important. If you really need
that, you may consider using the SMALL element. But especially if the
less important text is relatively long, it might often be a better
idea to put it "behind hyperlinks", into separate documents to which
there are links in the main document.

best regards.

[Rob McAninch]

Alan J. Flavell>:

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005, Jim Moe wrote:

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

OK, I guess I'm about ready to expose this page for public discussion:
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...i18n-weft.html

Just a couple minor comments, some that may be referenced in other
portions of this thread.

In the paragraph headed "Background to the present web page", I
suggest using title in that link to Google Groups or otherwise
rephrasing to alert the user to where you are sending them. And
perhaps a note that the thread can be considered 'archived' that
replying directly to it would not be good form.

Discussing Usenet etiquette within the page is perhaps not ideal,
but worth a thought.

I believe the Overview as current makes clear your goal.

the encoding would be standard W3C HTML encoding - the use of WEFT
is an optional additional feature to help MSIE out, particularly
when its user has inadequate fonts installed. "WEFT3" suddenly sprang into existence. Version 3? What is its
advantage over 1 or 2?

No idea - I've never tried another version.

Although you mention the current version, as of your writing, in the
Introduction perhaps a mention here just to be clear that previous
versions of WEFT are not relevant to the discussion.
I learned to read the abbreviation for Broken As Designed as the
letters B A D, not as the word "bad". However, if someone
else reads this bit as "bad", then it's OK by me...

The Jargon File refers to BAD as an acronym so using such markup is
appropriate IMO.
It didn't sound like a historical rant so I would say your changes
did the job in the introductory material.

As for <Pi*******************************@ppepc62.ph.gla. ac.uk>
and the de-emphasis of text. You might address this somewhat in your
next stylesheet with a lighter-weight font. Parenthetical text is
another consideration to denote less important but related comments.
Thought long sections of parenthetical text blend right into the
main body...

I didn't step through the details of actually using WEFT3 so can't
comment on the details of following that portion.

--
Rob McAninch
http://rock13.com

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, 2 Jan 2006, Rob McAninch wrote:

> http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...i18n-weft.html
Just a couple minor comments, some that may be referenced in other
portions of this thread.

In the paragraph headed "Background to the present web page", I
suggest using title in that link to Google Groups or otherwise
rephrasing to alert the user to where you are sending them. And
perhaps a note that the thread can be considered 'archived' that
replying directly to it would not be good form.
Thanks, I've re-cast the wording a bit, and hope it now addresses your
concerns, without turning the thing into a tutorial on netiquette.
Discussing Usenet etiquette within the page is perhaps not ideal,
but worth a thought.
Yes, I hope the mention of "archived" and the hint that "the
discussion is over" would be sufficient.
I believe the Overview as current makes clear your goal.
Thanks.

"WEFT3" suddenly sprang into existence. Version 3? What is its
advantage over 1 or 2?

No idea - I've never tried another version.

Although you mention the current version, as of your writing, in the
Introduction perhaps a mention here just to be clear that previous
versions of WEFT are not relevant to the discussion.

Thanks. I hope the revised third paragraph of the introduction makes
things clearer now.

I learned to read the abbreviation for Broken As Designed as the
letters B A D, not as the word "bad". However, if someone
else reads this bit as "bad", then it's OK by me...

The Jargon File refers to BAD as an acronym so using such markup is
appropriate IMO.

So it does. It seems that I'm outvoted then. I've modified the
markup accordingly.
It didn't sound like a historical rant so I would say your changes
did the job in the introductory material.
Thanks. I feel that the interested reader is inevitably going to
stumble on one or other of the fake-ASCII (or fake-Latin1) font sites,
and I'm not 100% confident of readers taking my recommendation to read
my cited fontface-harmful page, so I wanted to retain a clear warning
against the trick method, right here. It looks to me to be a
reasonable compromise now, so I'm glad you found it acceptable.
As for <Pi*******************************@ppepc62.ph.gla. ac.uk> and
the de-emphasis of text. You might address this somewhat in your
next stylesheet with a lighter-weight font.

Thanks. I'll save these ideas up for when I do finally work-over that
stylesheet. The convention is used from a number of my other pages,
so I want to get it "right" before switching. Maybe I'm being overly
stubborn, but I didn't want this material moved out of line, I only
wanted it evident that it was de-emphasized, along the lines of what
seems to me to be a respectable typographic convention in printed
material. A pity that HTML does not have an explicit markup for
de-emphasis.

cheers