Re: [web-annotation] exactly 0 or 1 language(s)

On 5/23/2016 9:27 AM, Ivan Herman wrote:
>
> Thanks @r12a <https://github.com/r12a> for writing all this down. 
And, 
> at the moment, I am torn.
>
>  *
>
>     On the one hand, I think that the situation would become indeed
>     much clearer if a body (more exactly, in our terminology, a
>     Specific Resource or a Textual Body describing a body) would
>     indeed use 0 or one |language| tag. In case the use case is to
>     have different body resources out there that are conceptually
>     equivalent but are in different languages, then we can use 
Choice
>     or some of the (newly re-established) composites, to separate 
them
>     from one another. This makes the model clean, and also covers 
the
>     problems @r12a <https://github.com/r12a> has.
>
>  *
>
>     On the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact that, out there,
>     there are messy resources that we want to annotate; @gsergiu
>     <https://github.com/gsergiu> has clearly indicated that he is
>     facing such a situation. Texts may be out there that /do/ mix
>     languages (whether we like it or not), and the only way of
>     conveying this information in an annotation is to allow for more
>     than one languages.
>
> I believe the way forward is to say something like: "an annotation 
> SHOULD have zero or one language terms, and MAY have more than 1 in 
> exceptional cases." @gsergiu <https://github.com/gsergiu>'s use case
 
> may be quoted in an informal note where the MAY comes into effect, 
but 
> we should also note that implementations/users should really try to 
> use one language, because otherwise problems may occur.
>
> And stop there...
>
(I didn't see this text on GitHub, so I'm copying the message I am 
replying to).

SHOULD already implies that one has a good reason for a different 
choice, so I don't think "exceptional" is either useful or necessary.

The *original language* had it right:

"The Body or Target SHOULD have exactly 1 language associated with it,
 
but MAY have 0 or more."

As this seemed contradictory to some, perhaps what is needed is an 
editorial fix, that is, an example:

"The Body or Target SHOULD have exactly 1 language associated with it,
 
but MAY have 0 or more, for example if the language cannot be 
identified 
or the resource contains a mix of languages."

(My example for "0" may not be what was intended, so just fix 
accordingly).



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Received on Monday, 23 May 2016 16:42:32 UTC