[whatwg] A better name than <gauge> for the element that shows a measurement

[Christoph Paeper]

*Ian Hickson*:
> So one of the HTML5 elements is <gauge>:
> 
>    Relevancy: <gauge>70%</gauge>

I haven't been reading this list for half an year, so I've probably 
missed out the reasoning for two element types, |gauge| and |progress|, 
instead of one, called |fraction| or some such.

> Unfortunately, the study Google did on Web authors showed that authors 
> cannot spell the word "language", and I see no reason to believe that they 
> might spell "gauge" either.

I'm not a native speaker and would have written it correctly. OTOH I 
never would have imagined the alleged AE spelling 'gage' [LEO], because 
I would pronounce that completely different: /gO:Z/ vs. /geIdZ/ [SAMPA].

> So. <gauge> is out. What better element name can people think of?

  - |measurement|, |measure|, |m|,
  - |scale|,
  - |rule|, |ruler|,
  - |screw|,
  - |register|,
  - |enumerator|, |numerator|, |enum|, |num|,
  - |tally|,
  - |jig|,
  - |quality|, |quantity|, |quaty|, |qty|.

Like I said, I'm not a native speaker and I haven't fully grasped the 
semantics of that element type yet.

> <meter> is the best so far. I'm not sure it's better than <gauge>.

It's better than yard for sure. &smiley;


[LEO]   <http://dict.leo.org/se?search=Anzeigeinstrument>
[SAMPA] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMPA_chart_for_English>