Re: Glossary project

Dear all,

Few days ago, Ivan Herman informed the offices that there is a published
version of the W3C Glossary. The application looks very nice indeed!

Since I want to help with the work, I've briefly played with the
application. Few comments in good faith:

1) Perhaps the introduction might want to briefly clarify the selection
criteria for the terms (glossary sources)? It seems that some rather
central specifications are not included (perhaps only for now, for
technical reasons?). For instance, searching for the term "namespace"
returns nothing. However, one might expect to be able to access the
terminology of, e.g., XML 1.0 & XML NS.

2) The Admin/Edit part seems to talk (also) about "concepts" while the
intro talks about "terms". Why the difference? In addition, the very
difficult issues related to the taxonomic differences and subclassing of
terms, and the context of using them (e.g. "CEO concepts versus technical
concepts")  will probably be dealt with the ontology part? (Search e.g.
for a "profile".)

3) Assuming translations exist, how can I search for a Finnish translation
of the definition "namespace" (and thus effectively, also a translation of
the _term_ itself). Of course, this is different than searching a
definition for the translated term "nimiavaruus" (a Finnish translation
for "namespace"). Perhaps the form

"Term: [____]"

...should read:

"Term: [____] in [Choose language]"

...and the current language selection should identify the result language.

4) In addition to the above, one might want to search _only_ the
translations? (I.e. currently one gets always the English terms also...)

5) Currently, the language selection (e.g. French) seems to have no
effect. Or then my French is as fluid (or poor) as my English and I just
can't see the difference... This obviously relates to the above... i.e. it
might be better that the result set informed the user that "Currently,
there are no French translations for the terms XXX1, XXX2, and XXX3 in the
DB".

6) When searching, what is the meaning of the "Reset" button? It seems to
have no effect. (And even if it had, is the button needed at all?)

7) In addition to searching for terms, one might also like to refer to the
terms and definitions (e.g. when talking about terms or translations...).
What if the application was added a feature for this (thus effectively
giving URI names to the W3C terms +[:-) [*])? Of course, in an ideal case,
one would obviously refer to the original specifications but due to e.g.
missing markup, it can't be done. (Well, not without some XPointer-style
fancy work.)

8) The meaning of the phrase "definition" in the "Search in Term names and
checkbox and [] definitions..." might seem a bit unclear. I assume that it
means a free-text search within definitions but it came to me only in the
second reading...

9) How about a good-old glossary index (a link/control for all languages)?
Trying the get an overview what the glossary is all about, one might week
for a (condensed) index-kind-of page for all the terms. E.g.

-----snip----
...
D

..., device, domain, driver, ...

E

..., element, entity, ...
...
-----snip----

...where selecting "entity" would search the full glossary for the term
(i.e. the index would not include duplicates). The page might be a bit
long but very useful -- I believe it may even become more popular than the
searches. And it could clearly point out the terms needing translations...
(e.g. including "missing terms" in English, with different markup [color
etc.])

10) A help would help ;) The application is also a bit slow. I assume the
speed has something to do with the real-time part of the application...
Having said this, what happens when a spec changes its term or becomes
resigned? (This is obviously related to [*].)

11) Future wishes: I haven't tried out making translations yet (Ivan told
the offices that this is not set up yet). However, a term should obviously
have multiple translations in a language (e.g. "main" and "alternatives").
In addition, I might understand the strict sense of a glossary, but the
possibility of adding examples and comments (e.g. from the Team, WGs, and
the TAG) could make this a killer application. (Just imagine the n+1
courses, seminars and presentations around the globe teaching these
things...)

My comments are obviously minor (except of course for the 7 and 11)
remarks to the significant work done by the WG.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

--Ossi


--
Ossi Nykänen                              Tel   +358 3 3115 3544
Tampere University of Technology          Fax   +358 3 3115 3549
DMI / W3C Finnish Office                  Email ossi@w3.org
P.O. Box 553, FIN-33101 Tampere, Finland  Web   www.w3c.tut.fi


On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Ivan Herman wrote:

>
> I hope you still remember this...
>
> As a first phase of a glossary project and English (ehm, sorry,
> American;-) glossary system has now been set up at:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2003/glossary/
>
> it is still not final, the user interface needs some tuning, etc, but it
> is an important first step.
>
> At this moment, it is populated by the team, and we will have to work
> out the process to get translated terms into the system. This will come.
> In the meantime, I think it is already a good resource, and may be
> interesting for translators, too!
>
> Ivan
>
> --
>
> Ivan Herman
> W3C Head of Offices
> C/o W3C Benelux Office at CWI, Kruislaan 413
> 1098SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
> tel: +31-20-5924163; mobile: +31-641044153;
> URL: http://www.w3.org/People/all?pictures=yes#ivan
>
>

Received on Thursday, 25 September 2003 05:40:05 UTC