Minutes: i18n GEO F2F Cannes 040301

MINUTES
W3C I18N GEO F2F
Technical Plenary, Cannes, 1-5 March 2004
Attendees: Martin Dürst, Najib Tounsi, Richard Ishida (Chair I18N GEO), Tex Texin 
Deborah Cawkwell, Addison Philipps
Observers: Ann Bassetti, Nicolas Duboc
 
DELIVERABLES FOR END OF CURRENT CHARTER

Discussion about WHAT to Deliver
- The Charter (http://www.w3.org/2002/05/i18n-recharter/WG-charter.html#geo).
- Decision to extract from Techniques, the four complete sections and present separately as Notes; these include the key areas of character encoding, bi-di and language identification. These have now been published as editor’s drafts and are linked from the http://www.w3.org/International/geo/ page. John Yunker had also shown an interest in working on navigation – Richard to check on progress.
- Decision to deliver extracted sections as Notes, rather than web pages. Notes require top-heavy process (W3C stuff, etc), but this information adds weight.
- Identification of additional sections which were important or near enough completion to be ready for August: forms, XForms.
- Retention of Techniques structure as a 'roadmap' with links to completed Notes.
- We will maintain the full list of desirable topics in a separate location. Richard has done some work on this; a little more work needs to be done.
- Lose 3.4 Specifying the encoding of a link destination. 
- Keep 6.8 Enabling mirroring of layout. 
- How to refer to the FAQs - use a paragaraph to explain that the FAQs have informed the Techniques documents.

Discussion about HOW to work on the Deliverables for the End of the Charter
- The focus of work must be on the deliverables, ie the Guideline Notes. However, if people felt more comfortable producing FAQs, Richard could incorporate that information into the Guideline Notes or the FAQ author could additionally prepare Guideline Notes work themselves.
- Although the focus of work must be on the Guideline Notes, the FAQs and tutorials are a helpful/effective way of amassing content for the Techniques and valuable in their own right. Sometimes one had been produced per week, but they had occupied most of the attention of the group. Would it be helpful to assign a reviewer as well as a writer to each FAQ? The FAQs could feed into the Guideline Notes, especially if that would be a way of producing more information. 
- There was a suggestion to 'divide and conquer' by allocating some people to Guideline Notes and others to FAQs, but it was felt that a lot was gained by group input into each and that, in some ways, division dilutes.
- Richard emphasised the importance of committing to work and delivering on deadline. Richard had produced a plan of work organised by importance (http://www.w3.org/International/2003/plan.html), which would aid meeting preparation, rather than solely relying on the agenda. 'For Final Review' must be read for the meeting; 'For Early Review' should be read if there's enough time. (Addison: similar problems with the Web Services task force. Now sending people specific assignments. It was important to make small-enough, granular tasks that people could accomplish alongside their day jobs.

Discussion about GEO output
- How should tutorials, Techniques & FAQs work together?
- Some confusion around the difference between tutorials & technique notes:
 - Tutorial: defined around slide sets
 - Techniques: what are all the things I should do
 - FAQ answers a question
 - Articles everything else
- Suggestion that it might be useful to state the function of the different documents on the web site.
- An FAQ needs to be very tight with a strong focus on the question - could also be a short article.  
- Tex: Could be more task-orientated.
- Glossary to be added culling terms used in current work. Tex to start pulling the glossary together, Richard to search current tutorials and guidelines fro the initial batch of words.
- Articles from people outside the GEO group. Was it decided that this should be encouraged and if so, how?
- Dynamic web site features. (More about this?)
 
CHARTER RENEWAL - DISCUSSION RE GEO ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT TWO YEARS
(Current charter: http://www.w3.org/2002/05/i18n-recharter/WG-charter.html#geo)
Localisation
- Locale model where the goal was to make localisation a black box. 
- There is little information on cultural design issues; metaphors and gestures are not culturally neutral; calendar: week starts on different day; time & date; division of the day (eg, in Thailand the day is divided into four part). Some localisation issues are more difficult to pin down: colours, how much information on the screen, navigation location in some Asian. Localisation can complicate re-purposing. 
- There is are UI localisation issues such as scroll bar location. Should this be a language issue, as it currently seems to be, or an accessibility issue, ie, depending on left- or right-handedness (cf, is there a distinction between left and right click?). Should this depend on the user agent set-up or the page set-up? Should the group have an opinion or was this outside GEO's remit? 

I18N Architecture
- Architecture for I18N: making I18N core to the build, rather than adding as an extra layer, eg, style sheet structure, bold mark-up.
- This could mean going back and making changes in your architecture.

Support For I18N In Programming Languages
- I18N in programming languages (keg, Perl, JSP) / applications used to automate site-building as a long-term goal. Richard expressed concerns that the scope was to large.

Collaboration
- Within I18N Activity groups: GEO should work closely with Core and Web Services I18N groups with the new Charter, especially given for the Core the large block of work represented by the Character Model would be finished by new Charter.
- Across other W3C Groups: Increase collaboration with other W3C Groups. Currently I18N DTD is shared with WAI group. Richard recently inputted to QA group. I18N GEO to co-ordinate with CSS group on test suite.

Increase The Size/Resource of I18N GEO Group
- Recruit more people. Could the type of work encourage more GEO members, eg, localisation for Boeing; I18N support in programming languages?

Education
- Should more work be done in this area?
- Need to think about how education & outreach materials should grow: work out scope and structure.

Deliverable
- Must be deliverable, not too 'blue sky'.
 
TUTORIAL: CHARACTER SETS & ENCODINGS IN XHTML, HTML AND CSS
(http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc.html)

Unicode Knowledge Pre-requisite
- Does knowledge of Unicode need to be an assumption in the use of the document. Many I18N sites do not use Unicode. However, it would be useful to emphasise the benefits of Unicode for I18N.

Glossary
- Addition of glossary. Text to cull FAQs (only?). Richard: to find all terms in document and point to where they are used. Tex to provide 'use case': definition.

HTML Character Entities, Numerical Character References (NCRs)
- The recommendation is not to use. Deborah thought it useful add clarification about why the use of HTML character entities seemed to have been recommended in the past (portability) and why it was no longer a recommendation. (Otherwise this may seem to content developers like a difference in opinion, rather than clear advice.)
- Clarification about where HTML character entities and NCRs are useful, eg, within attributes, ".
- Choice of NCRs over character entities, eg, HTML character entities are mnemonic; NCRs are not.
Hex vs decimal, examples of both, reference to use in Unicode standard of hexadecimal. 

Quirks section to be cloned, so that it will remain in the tutorial, but another instance will be created. 

Outcome
- Publish with what we've discussed today. Action Richard.
- Tex: holding page for comments. (Is there an action on this?)
 
TUTORIAL: USING LANGUAGE INFORMATION IN XHTML, HTML AND CSS
(http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-lang.html)

Language tag ('lang')
- Are the examples distinct enough, showing that glyphs used vary in small details.
- Bullet point benefits, eg, for text readers, search.
- Simplify text, eg, not 'style-generated', not 'ideographic code points'.
- Add elements where 'lang' tag cannot be used.
- Not 'lists codes' but 'defines', because it is a standard.
- *a* few not 'few'
- look again at use of ';'

Sub codes
- Applies only to first code, not to second one. (Not quite sure what this means.)

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS 
- Would it be helpful to assign a reviewer as well as a writer to each FAQ? 

ACTIONS
RI: check with John Yunker re navigation document for Techniques.
RI: extract completed sections and present as Working Drafts. DONE
RI: full list of desirable topics in a separate location (to that of pointers to Notes). A little more work required.
TT: to start pulling the glossary together.
RI: to search current tutorials and guidelines fro the initial batch of words.TT: provide 'use case': definition (glossary).
DC, RI: meet with Ian Hickson (CSS Group & Opera) re test suite collaboration.  DONE
All: read 'Language markup in XHTML and CSS'.
All: use the Plan document to prepare for each weekly meeting.
RI: state the function of the different documents on the web site?
RI: incorporate Tutorial Review comments.
All: re-read Charter (http://www.w3.org/2002/05/i18n-recharter/WG-charter.html#geo).
All: read TAG document (http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/).
RI: Quirks section to be cloned. DONE
 

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Received on Saturday, 20 March 2004 11:24:51 UTC