Re: Basic Latin

On 1/2/2013 3:26 PM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 2013-01-03 0:22, Markus Scherer wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> The page has been modified to add an alias for Basic Latin (ASCII) under
>> the Latin heading.
>
> I can see that, but I don’t think it’s an improvement. It puts the
> Latin script in a special status.

The special status results from the fact that nearly all other scripts
don't use the word "Basic" but have a block for which the name is equal
to the name of the script. The other exception is that this block
happens to be the most looked-up block, so a small change accommodates
many users.

The purpose of the index page is to allow people to find what they are
looking for, and when the are looking for "Basic Latin" because of the
block name, they should not be required to do mental gymnastics to
puzzle out where that block might be hidden.

> And it makes both “Latin” and “Basic Latin (ASCII)” links to the same
> page, violating fundamental accessibility principles: duplicate links
> should be avoided, and when they can’t be avoided, they should have
> exactly the same link texts.

Nice principle, but, utterly misapplied.

Look at any book index and you will find the same page (even passage)
indexed under multiple terms - as appropriate.

And, if you look at the page source for the chart index you will find
that there are already several links to the same page in other
instances, So this change is not some kind of dramatic departure.

The original design was created the way it was based on considerations
like the ones you raise here. Over time, evidence piled up that this was
creating a usability problem. That has been fixed, so now we can all
move along, nothing to see here.

A./
Received on Thu Jan 03 2013 - 01:03:32 CST