[whatwg] Feeedback on <dfn>, <abbr>, and other elements related to cross-references

[Christoph Päper]

Nicholas Shanks:

> I hope the following aids matters.

Aids? :)

> Situations where expansions of abbreviations are needed:
> 1)	People unfamiliar with the topic being discussed.

This includes adhoc abbreviations, which I frequently use in table  
headers.

> 2)	Documents that exist as both a single page, and as multiple pages
> 3)	Documents that use the same acronym to mean different things in  
> different contexts/sections.
> 4)	Documents where the acronym and an identically spelled word appear.

I forgot so far to mention my dearest English abbreviation, actually  
it is a (NIST-recommended) unit symbol and thus without the abbrev  
dot: 'in' for inch. Unit symbols and abbreviated function names (e.g.  
'sin') also may need markup (and styling) to keep them upright inside  
italic mathematic text (not every italic math is a |var|).

FWIW, I agree with Nicholas on everything else in his e-mail.