Marking up musical notes?

[Mark Tranchant]

On some of my pages, for example:

http://tranchant.plus.com/guitar/chord-tutorial/music-theory

....I refer to musical note names a lot in the text, such as A, F# and
Eb. Whilst cycling in to work this morning, it suddenly struck me that a
screen reader or speech browser would have a hard time with this. I
guess the user would end up with "F-pound" (for US speech browsers) and
"Ebb" or something.

So, what's the best solution? I don't want to use longhand "F-sharp,
B-flat" on the page. Visual browser support for the flat (♭) and
sharp (♯) characters is not good enough for me to use those.

What I want is something like <span pronounce="E flat">Eb</span> - a way
to make the speech browser say something *instead* of the apparent
content. Any ideas?

--
Mark.

http://tranchant.plus.com/

[Els]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Mark Tranchant wrote:
[color=blue]
> On some of my pages, for example:
>
> http://tranchant.plus.com/guitar/cho...l/music-theory
>
> ...I refer to musical note names a lot in the text, such as A, F# and
> Eb. Whilst cycling in to work this morning, it suddenly struck me that a
> screen reader or speech browser would have a hard time with this. I
> guess the user would end up with "F-pound" (for US speech browsers) and
> "Ebb" or something.
>
> So, what's the best solution? I don't want to use longhand "F-sharp,
> B-flat" on the page. Visual browser support for the flat (♭) and
> sharp (♯) characters is not good enough for me to use those.
>
> What I want is something like <span pronounce="E flat">Eb</span> - a way
> to make the speech browser say something *instead* of the apparent
> content. Any ideas?[/color]

<acronym title="E flat">Eb</acronym> maybe?
JAWS screen reader can be set to 'expand acronyms', and would say "E
flat" afaics.

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Els wrote:
[color=blue]
> <acronym title="E flat">Eb</acronym> maybe?[/color]

Except that it isn't an acronym, so you'd be lying in order to get the
desired effect.
[color=blue]
> JAWS screen reader can be set to 'expand acronyms', and would say "E
> flat" afaics.[/color]

noted, but it still isn't an acronym.

[Els]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
[color=blue]
> On Tue, 17 May 2005, Els wrote:
>[color=green]
>> <acronym title="E flat">Eb</acronym> maybe?[/color]
>
> Except that it isn't an acronym, so you'd be lying in order to get the
> desired effect.
>[color=green]
>> JAWS screen reader can be set to 'expand acronyms', and would say "E
>> flat" afaics.[/color]
>
> noted, but it still isn't an acronym.[/color]

I know - sometimes even I don't mind a little white lie <g>

I use <acronym> for abbreviations too - it's not my fault, but the
browser's ;-)

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

[Mark Tranchant]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Els wrote:[color=blue]
> Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=green]
>>On Tue, 17 May 2005, Els wrote:[/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>><acronym title="E flat">Eb</acronym> maybe?[/color][/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>>Except that it isn't an acronym, so you'd be lying in order to get the
>>desired effect.[/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>JAWS screen reader can be set to 'expand acronyms', and would say "E
>>>flat" afaics.[/color][/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>>noted, but it still isn't an acronym.[/color][/color]

It *is* an abbreviation, however - can JAWS expand <abbr> in the same
way, or does it work off MSIE code?

--
Mark.

http://tranchant.plus.com/

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Els wrote:
[color=blue]
> I use <acronym> for abbreviations too - it's not my fault, but the
> browser's ;-)[/color]

"The browser's"? You're not confusing that operating system component
with a real web browser, surely?

Normally I'd recommend <span title="E flat">...</span> if it's neither
an acronym nor an abbreviation (which IMHO this is not), or (if it's
an abbreviation, and you want to pander to IE)

<span title="whatever "><abbr title="whatever ">w/e</abbr></span>

But if, as you say, JAWS only wants to expand acronyms, and not title
attributes in general, then indeed there seems to be a dilemma.

[Spartanicus]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Mark Tranchant <mark@tranchant .plus.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>What I want is something like <span pronounce="E flat">Eb</span> - a way
>to make the speech browser say something *instead* of the apparent
>content. Any ideas?[/color]

Theoretically the right way to do this:

<style type="text/css" media="aural,sp eech">
span.note{conte nt:attr(title)}
</style>

<span class="note" title="E flat">Eb</span>

This would work in Opera 8 were it not for an issue whereby it doesn't
speak generated content if it's restricted to the aural/speech domain.

Practically I wouldn't bother trying to construct a solution unless it
has been established that speaking UAs are being used to access your
content. If the latter then the only cross UA solution is to replace Eb
with E Flat.

--
Spartanicus

[Els]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
[color=blue]
> On Tue, 17 May 2005, Els wrote:
>[color=green]
>> I use <acronym> for abbreviations too - it's not my fault, but the
>> browser's ;-)[/color]
>
> "The browser's"? You're not confusing that operating system component
> with a real web browser, surely?[/color]

I'm sorry - not confused, no, just thinking the general public's
thoughts ;-)
[color=blue]
> Normally I'd recommend <span title="E flat">...</span> if it's neither
> an acronym nor an abbreviation (which IMHO this is not), or (if it's
> an abbreviation, and you want to pander to IE)
>
> <span title="whatever "><abbr title="whatever ">w/e</abbr></span>
>
> But if, as you say, JAWS only wants to expand acronyms, and not title
> attributes in general, then indeed there seems to be a dilemma.[/color]

It can be set to use title attributes on links and form elements, but
not in general afaics.

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

[Els]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Mark Tranchant wrote:
[color=blue]
> Els wrote:[color=green]
>> Alan J. Flavell wrote:[color=darkred]
>>>On Tue, 17 May 2005, Els wrote:[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>><acronym title="E flat">Eb</acronym> maybe?[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>Except that it isn't an acronym, so you'd be lying in order to get the
>>>desired effect.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>>JAWS screen reader can be set to 'expand acronyms', and would say "E
>>>>flat" afaics.[/color][/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>noted, but it still isn't an acronym.[/color][/color]
>
> It *is* an abbreviation, however - can JAWS expand <abbr> in the same
> way, or does it work off MSIE code?[/color]

It has a setting to expand abbreviations, but I have no idea if it
uses the browser's code to detect them.
As I only have the 40 minute mode of Jaws, I'll restart my system to
check what it actually does. Back in a few mins... :-)

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

[Els]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Els wrote:
[color=blue]
> Mark Tranchant wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Els wrote:[color=darkred]
>>> Alan J. Flavell wrote:
>>>>On Tue, 17 May 2005, Els wrote:[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>>>>><acronym title="E flat">Eb</acronym> maybe?[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>>>>Except that it isn't an acronym, so you'd be lying in order to get the
>>>>desired effect.[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>>>>>JAWS screen reader can be set to 'expand acronyms', and would say "E
>>>>>flat" afaics.[/color]
>>[color=darkred]
>>>>noted, but it still isn't an acronym.[/color]
>>
>> It *is* an abbreviation, however - can JAWS expand <abbr> in the same
>> way, or does it work off MSIE code?[/color]
>
> It has a setting to expand abbreviations, but I have no idea if it
> uses the browser's code to detect them.
> As I only have the 40 minute mode of Jaws, I'll restart my system to
> check what it actually does. Back in a few mins... :-)[/color]

Okay, right: I used IE to display the page, and Jaws read both the
<abbr> and the <acronym> in full.

I think it would be useful to have a short explanation for users of
screen readers at the top of the page, saying that they'd need to set
<abbr> to expand in the options in case they haven't yet, in order to
hear A sharp instead of A pound for musical notes.

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

[Nick Kew]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Mark Tranchant wrote:[color=blue]
> On some of my pages, for example:
>
> http://tranchant.plus.com/guitar/cho...l/music-theory
>
> ...I refer to musical note names a lot in the text, such as A, F# and
> Eb. Whilst cycling in to work this morning, it suddenly struck me that a
> screen reader or speech browser would have a hard time with this. I
> guess the user would end up with "F-pound" (for US speech browsers) and
> "Ebb" or something.[/color]

Hmmm. Not an easy one, unless you resort to MusML (is there support for
such a thing in real life?)

How about <abbr title="F sharp">F#</abbr> ?

The title attribute is widely supported, and your use of the hash
is more-or-less an abbreviation (OK it's really a substitute).

BTW, How do 'merkins get pound out of that? I know hash shared the
shift-3 keyboard position with pound on keyboards of 20 years ago,
but there's no resemblence beyond that historical quirk.

--
Nick Kew

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Nick Kew wrote:
[color=blue]
> BTW, How do 'merkins get pound out of that? I know hash shared the
> shift-3 keyboard position with pound on keyboards of 20 years ago,[/color]

It's "pound" as in pound weight, i.e a stylised rendering of "lb".

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

Mark Tranchant <mark@tranchant .plus.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I don't want to use longhand "F-sharp,
> B-flat" on the page. Visual browser support for the flat (♭)
> and sharp (♯) characters is not good enough for me to use
> those.[/color]

There's the (too obvious?) option of using small images, e.g.
B<img alt="-flat" src="flat.gif">
This might be a feasible alternative, despite the (obvious?)
disadvantages such as the fact that the image does not change size and
style as font size and face are changed.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Mark Tranchant wrote:
[color=blue]
> ...I refer to musical note names a lot in the text, such as A, F# and
> Eb. Whilst cycling in to work this morning, it suddenly struck me that a
> screen reader or speech browser would have a hard time with this.[/color]

I'd expect them to whistle or sing.

[Eric Kenneth Bustad]

Re: Marking up musical notes?

In article <jmool2-447.ln1@asgard. webthing.com>,
Nick Kew <nick@asgard.we bthing.com> wrote:[color=blue]
>Mark Tranchant wrote:[color=green]
>> On some of my pages, for example:
>>
>> http://tranchant.plus.com/guitar/cho...l/music-theory
>>
>> ...I refer to musical note names a lot in the text, such as A, F# and
>> Eb. Whilst cycling in to work this morning, it suddenly struck me that a
>> screen reader or speech browser would have a hard time with this. I
>> guess the user would end up with "F-pound" (for US speech browsers) and
>> "Ebb" or something.[/color]
>
>Hmmm. Not an easy one, unless you resort to MusML (is there support for
>such a thing in real life?)
>
>How about <abbr title="F sharp">F#</abbr> ?
>
>The title attribute is widely supported, and your use of the hash
>is more-or-less an abbreviation (OK it's really a substitute).
>
>BTW, How do 'merkins get pound out of that? I know hash shared the
>shift-3 keyboard position with pound on keyboards of 20 years ago,
>but there's no resemblence beyond that historical quirk.[/color]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign

--
= Eric Bustad, Norwegian bachelor programmer