Inline expansion of abbreviations and acronyms

[whole diary]

[jamestheredengine]

I think the only amusingly wrong one I've giggled at lately was BSK^▸ (Brake Standard Corridor (carriage)) (as in the CRS code for Basingstoke) suddenly becoming a Mk I Brake Third Corridor. I think I prefer Basingstoke...

Edit: I just want to say how brilliant the expansion of abbreviations is – I really appreciate it, towns in north Hampshire and old rolling stock notwithstanding!

[grahame]

Over 950 abbreviations and acronyms are now listed at http://www.passenger.chat/acronyms.html - an increase of over 250 in the last three months - thanks to VickiS. Over 750 of them expand inline for guests and just under 720 for members. Whilst we *have* provided an option for members to turn the expansion off, only a few have done so as far as I can see - I've taken a brief snapshot and just 63 of the last 800 pages served to members have not been expanded, and those I'm pretty sure the 63 are by 'railgeeks' who don't need them.  Over 18,000 pages have been served to guests in the same time (since 8 a.m. this morning / it's  4 p.m. as I write this) and they're a mixture of real people not logged in, and spiders which index us to feed the search engines.

VickiS jumped in to the deep end with this project and as well as adding the hundreds of new clarifications has updated links and desciptions of others. Just about all recent acronymns / abbreviations are now listed - though those of "archive" age may still contain the occasional "what's that?" - so it's a completed upgrade, with a much lower key care and maintenance into the future.  And so onwards and upwards to further projects.

[Bmblbzzz]

Congratulations and thanks to VickiS.

[IndustryInsider]

Yes, thanks for your hard work, VickiS.  Bloody good work, or BGW as I like to say. 

[paul7575]

As long as you don’t list the “rail geeks” then Grahame…

Paul

[stuving]

I was just trying to post a link to Raildar to land on Reading's junction map, which would be https://raildar.co.uk/map/RDG. But that gets garbled by a failed attempt to resolve RDG., and isn't a live link (as you can see). The fix of putting a null escape string into RDG breaks the link. Having found an alternative, I shall leave that as an observation.

[grahame]

I was just trying to post a link to Raildar to land on Reading's junction map, which would be https://raildar.co.uk/map/RDG. But that gets garbled by a failed attempt to resolve RDG., and isn't a live link (as you can see). The fix of putting a null escape string into RDG breaks the link. Having found an alternative, I shall leave that as an observation.

Yes - I know the issue.  It's only come up occasionally and there's work to do to fix it - with a danger of replacing one "undocumented feature" by others.  For the moment, I'm suggesting members mention the code that's causing the problem a bit earlier in their post so it won't expand in the link

[Chris from Nailsea]

I'm rather startled to start posting this update, only to be warned,
Warning: this topic has not been posted in for 43 months.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

That's rather embarrassing on my part - I should have started this latest 'project' some time ago. 

However, I am now working on it, with grahame's full approval (it's his forum, after all!). 

There is one issue that I discovered quite early, though: the forum software we use cannot distinguish between two (or more) expansions of the same abbreviation or acronym.  I've therefore had to adopt a compromise solution, including both (or more) expansions, with the caveat 'depending on the context'.

Perhaps the most extreme example so far was 'SR^▸ (Southern Railway / Southern Region / Scot Rail / Scottish Region (rather confusing - it depends on the context))', where I've had to update the expansion text to 'Southern Railway / Southern Region / Scot Rail / Scottish Region (rather confusing - it depends on the context)'.

I hope all this updating helps, nevertheless.

CfN. 

[Chris from Nailsea]

Further to my previous post here:

I know I'm going to regret this offer, but bearing in mind it's been a while since ongoing updates were made (VickiS moved back to Sweden - with my renewed thanks for all her previous work here!), if any of our members have any new, or updated, abbreviations / acronyms and their expansions ...

Please send details to me - by personal message, rather than e-mail - and I'll add them at the next opportunity (generally, within a day).

CfN.