Re: Multilanguage alt/title

aloha, olivier!

while i find your proposed "altlang" and "titlelang" attributes not 
only as intriguing, but necessary if ALT is retained in HTML5, and
despite the excellent proposals of sander [1], rob and ben [2] for a 
better ALT, i am convinced that the solution lies in a more robust, 
much more detailed definition of, OBJECT -- rich markup would then not 
be an issue, and a browser could, through content-negotation with the 
rich content contained in the UA's preferences to expose the equivalent 
for the primary language or any other supported language that the user 
has set as a natural language cascade as the primary equivalent/alternate 
content offered to the user; 

the superior mechanism i would prefer be implemented is to reform and 
tightly define OBJECT, so that only one element is needed to contain 
video, audio, static images, etc. -- it would need to be an element whose 
children are marked up (lang="fr" or xml:lang="fr") so as to facillitate 
content-negotiation, so that the appropriate alternate equivalents are 
easily available to the user...

take, for example, a speech of vladmir putin -- obviously, if you are 
russian and deaf, you want to be served a russian transcript; if you can 
hear and understand spoken russian, but don't have a russian-capable 
screen reader, a russian braille table for your refreshable braille 
display, or a cyrillic font on for one's UA, one might request the 
transcript in one's own native tongue, so that the meaning of any 
unfamiliar phrases one hears can be gleaned from the transcript;

basically, in the ideal world, OBJECT would be able to programmatically 
indicate the equivalent/alternate presentation options that are 
available to the user, so that the user can choose from amongst many 
forms of alternate/equivalent presentation of the contents of the 
OBJECT and not be limited to a single alternative incapable of containing 
rich markup -- the content negotiation would be used to order, and -- 
if so set by the user in the UA's preferences -- limit what kinds of 
equivalent content are presented to the end user, including the option 
of the simultaneous exposition of an alternate/equivalent and the 
OBJECT itself...

using OBJECT as a universal media container capable of providing rich 
fallback, has been objected to because, it is claimed, it has been 
"broken" by implementors; to me that is a compelling arguement for 
standardizing the attributes and capacities of OBJECT and its children in 
the "user agent conformance" section of the HTML5 draft...

gregory.

1. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Aug/1096.html
2. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jul/0987.html
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LANGUAGE, n.  The music with which we charm the serpents guarding 
another's treasure.     -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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            Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
UBATS: United Blind Advocates for Talking Signs: http://ubats.org
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---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Olivier GENDRIN" <olivier.gendrin@gmail.com>
To: public-html <public-html@w3.org>
Sent: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:21:32 +0200
Subject: Multilanguage alt/title

> Hello WG !
> 
> I found yesterday night an issue about multilanguage alt and 
> title : example : <span lang="fr">Lorem ipsum <abbr 
> title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration 
> (Administration nationale de l'aéronautique et de l'espace)
> ">NASA</abbr> sit dolor amet</span>.
> 
> As you can see, i'm in a situation where, in a french sentence,
>  i have an abbreviation thas is used in french (so I don't need 
> to apply a @lang to my abbr) but who's long version is in 
> english. And as far as some of my readers don't read english, i 
> provide them with a tranlsated version of the abbreviation.
> 
> How could we indicate (to page readers) the language of a part 
> of a title or alt ?
> 
> Perhaps an attribute @titlelang end @altlang (like @hreflang)
>  that will take language code and ponctuation séparations. 
> Language code an ponctuation have to be separated by withe spaces.
> 
> Examples :
> <abbr title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration
> (Administration nationale de l'aéronautique et de l'espace)"
> titlelang="en ( fr )">NASA</abbr>
> <acronym title="Working Group - groupe de travail" titlelang="en 
> - fr">WG</acronym>
> 
> The white space separator between language codes and ponctuation 
> is important because of fr-fr language codes...
> 
> -- 
> Olivier G.
> http://www.lespacedunmatin.info/blog/
------- End of Original Message -------

Received on Wednesday, 29 August 2007 15:19:06 UTC