RE: Language techniques: biggish changes

Hi Richard & all
 
See my comments below.
 
Best regards
 
Susan

Abstract 
 I agree with Deborah's earlier email comment and would only remove the
word "such" from her suggested sentence.

Introduction
- 1.1 Agree with DC on "author", but I would not put quote marks around
either of the other words.
- 1.1 I might say "a localization group" rather than "the", agreeing
with DC in wondering how many of them exist at this point.

- 1.2 I like this section, although I would say "stand alone" rather
than "self-sufficient."
- 1.2 I would delete the final user agent comment (that DC had issues
with) and leave all discussion of them to 1.4

- 1.3 Agree with DC in questioning "the right editing tools". Don't we
just mean the appropriate or relevant ones?

- 1.4 Overall, I agree with DC's comments re: this section being ripe
for simplification.

Important Concepts aka Definitions
- Primary language.  Works as previously edited for me. Would disagree
with DC's foray into renaming it 'audience language.'

- 3.1 "Primary language metadata is usually best declared outside the
document in the HTTP Content-Language header, although there may be
situations where an internal declaration ..." 
begs the question for me. Don't we talk about this somewhere? If so,
link to it?
- 3.2 "The default text processing language is not necessarily the same
as the primary language of a document." 
OK. I'll bite: add example of when they'd be different? 
-3.3 Introduces the term "natural language" - previously undefined.
Worrisome.
-3.3 Lovely use of the word "conflated," which I can appreciate after
having finally found the definition in the online UK dictionary after
the US one did not have it. Perhaps the more pedestrian "confused" would
work for us colonials and the ESL crowd? ;-)
-3.3 Final sentence again seems to beg a link.
Declaring the language of a page
This section is a big mouthful to swallow.  It may be that the language
section of 
http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/outline/html-authoring-out
line.html has resolved most of my issues.  Turthfully, I'm getting a bit
confused with all the different versions of this doc.  If it is still an
issue -- RI would know best -- I would like to talk on the telecon
about:
Using DC's suggestion to not just retitle it "How to" but in addition to
divide it into two parts: How to declare the primary language and How to
declare the text processing language. We pop back and forth a bit, also
discussing text processing lang first, after the reverse order in the
definitions. I think we could group these easily and eliminate a
substantial amount of redundant text which I believe might confuse the
reader.
I would also be interested in investigating the idea of a "Commentary"
heading within sections. It was once brought to my attention that in the
corporate training environment we made a mistake in conducting classes
as if we were still in college ("at uni"?) when what people really
needed was less a five-day theory seminar and more of a two-hour quick
and dirty "here's how to use this on YOUR job." 
The discussion in this section in particular, while lovely to read,
seems to me a bit more than I, the developer need to know to do my job.
In my mind, a reader "dipping in to a particular section to find out how
to perform a specific task" may be thinking, "Just show me the markup."
So, I am wondering what you might think about "facts" first ie. the
technique and really pertinent info and then the "commentary" for the
more leisurely reader, who voluntarily chooses the additional
information, without reading through it for fear of missing a fact. I'll
not insist on a crystal ball icon for specific commentary on what the
future may hold.
Again, perhaps I have missed the versioning boat and this is a
non-issue. If so, apologies.
Other
- Swedish/svenska technique: Re: "russian doll" approach, would just
"nested" be suggestive enough? Also pls change 'show' to 'shows' there.
10 Specifying the language of a link destination
- I think the potential problem discussed here would be handled in the
course of reasonable site maintenance and is overemphasized.
- Could this be placed physically next to the Swedish/svenska one? It
seems similar?
General
I would delete number references when linking to other sections, eg. "5
Definitions" reads to me like the number of definitions provided ("Four
Weddings..."?) 
I think I have already picked at the language, "Consider using" eg. for
more than one primary language.  To me this verb remains mushy. Should I
or shouldn't I? Are you recommending it or not? "Plusses" and "Minuses"?
"If you do" and "If you don't"?
Maybe I am icon/header crazed, but if there are "definite problems" (eg.
"Note that there is a definite problem when dealing with multilingual
title elements."), I'd like to see that called out a little more
strongly.

Received on Wednesday, 9 February 2005 01:13:57 UTC