Re: [widgets] i18n <span> element VS unicode RLM/LRM

Hi Felix (and i18n Core),
During our last WAF teleconf, WebApps decided to adopt your
suggestions (below). I've been attempting to integrate your
suggestions into the Widget Packaging spec [1]. Below I summarize what
draft text I have added thus far. I would really appreciate any
feedback if you think I've gone about specifying what you intended
correctly.

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 1:32 AM, Felix Sasaki <fsasaki@w3.org> wrote:
> Marcos Caceres wrote:
>>
>> Hi, i18n-WG.
>> In recent feedback we received from Addison Phillips regarding the
>> Widgets 1.0: Packaging specification, he suggested that WebApps should
>> add a <span>-like element to our Widget Configuration Document format
>> (so to allow bidi text to be declared).
>>
>
> I think such an element would only be necessary within these elements: name,
> description, author, license. It seems that only these elements may contain
> human readable text.
>
Agreed. More on this below.

<snip>
> I personally would recommend you to use the <its:span> element in the ITS
> namespace. The element is defined at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-its-20070403/#span
> This element gives you the "dir" attribute and various other attributes
> which are useful for esp. Widgets localization. See
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-its-20070403/#att.local.no-ns.attributes
> See also the related "Best Practice" to define such an element for XML
> vocabularies at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xml-i18n-bp-20080213/#DevSpan
> To keep simplicity for Widgets 1.0, you could say in your conformance
> description that a Widgets processor has various options to deal with the
> <its:span> element (or more in general: the ITS namespace) and its
> attributes: ignore them or process them.

Ok, in the Widget User Agent conformance section I've added the
following text for your consideration:

"A widget user agent MAY support the Internationalized Tag Set's
<its:span> element and the its:dir attribute [ITS]. Support of any
other ITS elements and attributes is NOT REQUIRED. Although this
specification specifies the elements of the configuration document in
which <its:span> and its:dir can be used (below), it does not define
how they are to be interpreted and processed by a widget user agent.
If a widget user agent implements <its:span> and its:dir, then they
MUST do so in conformance to the processing rules defined by the ITS
specification."

Then I've added the following subsection to the Configuration Document
section...

== Indicating text directionality and <its:span> ==
Although it is optional for a widget user agent to implement [ITS],
authors are may use the <its:span> element to indicate the
directionality of arbitrary content. Directionality is indicated by
using the its:dir attribute in conjunction with the <its:span>
element. The its:dir accepts one of the following values, as defined
in [ITS]:

dir="ltr"  - left to right text
dir="rtl"  - right to left text
dir="lro" - left-to-right override
dir="rlo" - right-to-left override

For example,

<widget
   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets"
   xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its">
  <name>Yay for the  "<its:span dir="rtl">متعة الأسماك!</its:span>"
Widget</name>
</widget>

The <its:span> element can be only be used as a child of the following
elements of the configuration document:
  * <name>
  * <description>
  * <author>
  * <license>

> If you do not want to add markup from a specific namespace, you could or
> should IMO add extensibility points for people who need such markup. That
> is, change in the schema something like
>
> description = element description {
>  xmllang.att?,
>  text
> }
>
> to
>
> description = element description {
>  xmllang.att?,
>  any
> }
>
> and define "any" and a pattern "anyElement" as
>
> any= (attribute * { text }
>    | text
>    | anyElement)*
>
> anyElement =  element * { any }
>
> Again the conformance for such markup can say: ignore it ("it" meaning:
> markup from other namespaces) or process it. I think you are basically
> saying that already at http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/#extensions

Agreed. Our schema will be updated to include the above.

Thank you again for your help! And looking forward to hearing any
feedback you might have,
Marcos
-- 
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Wednesday, 8 October 2008 21:48:10 UTC