At 3:22 PM +0000 3/24/06, Simon Pieters wrote:
>
>What's wrong with:
>
>   <p>The <dfn>tiger</dfn>, <span xml:lang="la">Panthera 
>tigris</span>, is a large, striped Asian felid.</p>

A: as a meme, a markup pattern:

1. You don't know what constitutes the definiens.

Does the latin name define 'tiger'? or the whole <p>? Or an enclosing <div>?

For the purposes of processing this text to assist anyone having
difficulty with the term 'tiger,' I believe that you need to know
that "Panthera tigris" is not just "in Latin" but that it fulfills
the role of "scientific name" or "unique name" of the "species" that
you wish to be the concept bound to the term 'tiger.'

2. There's no greased path to better information.

This is the major web sin. The first meme of the web is reference by
URI. Terminology (knowledge) is a network. Plug into the network.

For example, replace the <span> with a <q> and you get an @cite attribute:

<q xml:lang="la"
cite="http://www.bigcats.org/abc/catspecies/species.html ">Panthera
tigris</q>

B: as an instance, use case or test case:

1. You don't need it.

This fragment purports to give a definition for 'tiger' whereas
looking in any commonly-used English dictionary for 'tiger' would
give you a better explanation than this.

2. No reading-level reduction in definiens.

It purports to explain a commonly-understood term in terms of arcana.
In other words, if you need a term in the glossary, it is 'felid' and
not 'tiger.'

To explain the term 'felid' you may use the term 'tiger.' To explain
the term 'tiger,' you need a picture, a sound file, a link to "Little
Black Sambo."

3. See also

The problem in the large:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/usage/languageUsageAndAccess.html 

Baby steps we should be taking to address this problem:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20060117/Overview.html#meaning-idioms 

Is this a job for microformats?
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2006Mar/0001.html 

Al

>...?
>
>Regards,
>Simon Pieters