- From: Cramer, Dave <Dave.Cramer@hbgusa.com>
- Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2016 14:57:13 +0000
- To: Nick Ruffilo <nickruffilo@gmail.com>
- CC: "DPUB mailing list (public-digipub-ig@w3.org)" <public-digipub-ig@w3.org>
On Feb 9, 2016, at 9:45 AM, Nick Ruffilo <nickruffilo@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear DPUB Group, > > I had one of those things where the brain feels warm - I think they call it a thought... > > Would there be a use-case for being able to have multiple translations of a text within a single container? For example, if I had a copy of Tom Sawyer in English, French, German, etc, it could all be in one package, and I'd be able to toggle between them? At least being able to go to the same chapter (or a given location) and switching between languages might be extremely useful. > > I imagine in STEM type stuff this might be huge - allowing for an educational research paper to be shared in multiple languages - or maybe that's a bad thing, who knows. > > I can imagine a bunch of really fun things one could do with such functionality as well (imagine a "dimension hopping sci-fi that you have to switch 'languages' to get to the end of the book - some translations move you forward, while others move you back' but that's not a use case I'd push as a reason for such functionality. Ah, yes, these would be called multiple renditions in EPUB-land [1]. It's a good use case, but I want to point out very early that this can *immensely* complicate things. And we should pay careful attention to how the ordinary web handles multiple-language sites. One thing we haven't explicitly mentioned is that many of us have experience with a portable document format for the web, namely EPUB. And I think we should absolutely try to learn from that experience, and hopefully not repeat some of the mistakes of EPUB. The CSS Working Group has a wiki page called "Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS" [2]. Perhaps we should do something similar. Dave [1] http://www.idpf.org/epub/renditions/multiple/ [2] https://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes This may contain confidential material. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender, delete immediately, and understand that no disclosure or reliance on the information herein is permitted. Hachette Book Group may monitor email to and from our network.
Received on Tuesday, 9 February 2016 14:57:49 UTC