Re: Shortened titles in OMFs and Yelp

["Eugene O'Connor" <eugene oconnor sun com>]

Dan Mueth wrote:
> 
> I like the idea of introducing an optional attribute to <title>, such as
> 'shorttitle', for people to include a briefer title.  We should come up
> with some guidelines for its use.  As a start:
> * For application manuals, typically just include the application title.
> (ie. omit articles like "The" and words like "Manual")
> * A short title should be no longer than ___ characters.  (How many?)
> * Do not include document or application version information

So the OMF file will look like this:

   <title shorttitle="Calculator">
     GNOME Calculator Manual V2.0
   </title>

Looks good to me.

The guidelines and definition look good. I wonder whether we should specify a precise number of characters though. Perhaps it would be better to leave some flexibility and say "usually less than 20 characters".  

> 
> Since existing versions of ScrollKeeper doesn't support the 'shorttitle'
> attribute, it seems reasonable for GNOME to use abbreviated titles in the
> title element for now (everybody gets to name their own documents, after
> all).

So it's OK to use, for example: 

   <title>
     Calculator
   </title>

until the shorttitle attribute is implemented? The contents of the OMF <title> tag do not have to match the contents of the XML <title> tag? If that's the case, perhaps we can use the original suggestion so that we can easily update the OMF files when the shorttitle attribute is implemented. The original suggestion was:

  <comment>
     GNOME Calculator Manual V2.0
   </comment>
   <title>
     Calculator
   </title>

What do you think?

> 
> Hopefully we can resolve this issue quickly and add the 'shorttitle'
> attribute very soon.  Any opinions on how (or whether) we should implement
> the 'shorttitle' attribute and on its use guidelines are welcome and
> encouraged.
>