<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16414" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY
style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space"
bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>On Tuesday, April 24, 2007 9:34 PM David Walbert
wrote</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">On Apr 24, 2007, at 9:19 PM, Jon Barnett
wrote:</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">That could also apply to other tones of voice where
context doesn't make it obvious, such as irony, anger, suspicion, elation,
and veiled threats. <BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV>
<DIV>But if you mark it up, it won't be a veiled threat
anymore.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>No it won't but it might help somebody else
translate your work into another language.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>A couple of thoughts --</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>a. I rather like this sort of thing -- I wrote a
note to the HTML WG a month or so ago (in reflection on the <abbr>
<acronym> debate -- no I am not trying to reopen that) about a variety of
allied issues: graphemic, pronunciation-related, and semantic <A
href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007JanMar/0458.html">http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007JanMar/0458.html</A> .
It may have not been the proper audience, or perhaps it will become a part of
the standard, or maybe it was just plain dumb, I am not sure yet. <humor
backward-pointer="1sentence"/></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>b. The W3C has a "reasoning with uncertainty"
incubator WG. I would be quite uncertain myself in making any proper explanation
of what they do. But I can say it looks pretty worthwhile and at
least tangentially relevant to the markup of "authorial intent" which itself can
go a long way toward exposing those inferences that can be
appropriately associated with our utterances.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>c. Consider a non-normative (descriptive) study of
all those "odd" orthographic conventions that people have invented (including
cross cultural and historical studies of punctuation) leading up to modern
<quasi> markup </quasi> -related neologisms (including such things
as -; and <happyface/>) . Such studies might help to expose (for
example) the different contextual meanings of parenthesis -- back in grad school
some 30+ years ago I counted something like 10 different meanings of parentheses
in running English text) . </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>These would all be good studies I think. Such
analyses would help bridge the gap between semantics1 (as used by humans) and
semantics2 (as used by compilers and interpreters) and could bring value to any
new markups that seek to empower humans to express themselves with
clarity.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>example: "when I speak of ambiguity, I speak with
no <ambiguous>ambiguity</ambiguous>" <humor
backward-pointer="1sentence"/>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>d. Folks who appear to represent some of the other WG's within W3C seem to
be receptive to these sorts of discussions of what we might call "markup of
authorial intent."</DIV></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>cheers,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>David Dailey</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>