Re: HTML International Coding

For some reason I haven't seen Richard's question yet, just Russ's. We should
include it in q&a.

I think the part about supporting English needs modification to emphasize it
less.
The decision should reflect the audience for the XML and also should take into
account it is possible to document the tags.
The number of tags is not unlimited so learning the tags is not so
problematic. The problem reduces to whether non-speakers are able to type and
distinguish and display the tags. (And pronounce perhaps.)

So we might take the stance, if you were going to use some exotic language for
tags, here are the things you could do to help non-speakers.
Then we should turn around and also tell english xml designers, here are the
same things you should do for a non-english speaking audience to help them.

We might also identify some of the non-english characters that are allowed but
a bad idea to use in tags, if tags.
(I have to check what's allowed, but I have in mind dashes, spaces, etc. that
might be especially  confusing)

tex

Russ Rolfe wrote:
> 
> Agreed, Russ
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Ishida [mailto:ishida@w3.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 3:47 AM
> To: public-i18n-geo@w3.org
> 
> Here is a question and answer we could perhaps add to our Q&A list.
> Anyone disagree?
> 
> I'd need to research the XMetal thing if we included it (and be more specific, mentioning that it is version 4).  Anyone know of any other tools that allow this, or know more about what XMetal does?
> 
> RI
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> W3C
> 
> tel: +44 1753 480 292
> http://www.w3.org/International/
> http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Ishida [mailto:ishida@w3.org]
> Sent: 29 April 2003 11:37
> To: 'Askin Charles A. J9C683'
> Cc: 'Richard Ishida'
> Subject: RE: HTML International Coding
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I just found this languishing in one of my mail folders.  Apologies for
> not responding sooner!
> 
> The HTML tags are all pre-defined (in English) and must remain that way
> to be recognised by user agents (eg. Browsers).
> 
> In XML it is possible to define your own tag names.  You can do this in
> any language supported by Unicode - though I would caution you to be
> careful here.  If you yourself had to deal with a tagset in Chinese or
> Hindi, this might prove difficult if you don't speak those languages and
> have the right fonts and rendering software on your system.  English tag
> names have an advantage in that people from a large number of countries
> are likely to be able to view and understand the meaning of the tags.
> 
> I also heard very recently that the XML editor XMetal allows you to
> temporarily redefine tag names for authors who use other languages - to
> help them understand better the semantics - though I've yet to explore
> this in more detail.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> 
> Richard.
> 
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> W3C
> 
> tel: +44 1753 480 292
> http://www.w3.org/International/ http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Askin Charles A. J9C683 [mailto:Charles.Askin@je.jfcom.mil]
> > Sent: 25 February 2003 16:12
> > To: ishida@w3.org
> > Subject: HTML International Coding
> >
> >
> > Sir,
> > I'm sorry that I will ask this, but my colleagues and I don't
> > know the answer to this and I found your name at
> > http://www.w3.org/International/Activity.html#role .
> >
> > Question:  When someone writes an HTML document for
> > submission on the WWW do they write the tag code (i.e. <html>
> > English) in their native language or do the tags need to be
> > in English.  I realize that the content could be in various
> > languages, but I am curious about within the tags themselves.
> >
> > Any reply would be appreciated.
> > Thank you,
> > Chuck Askin
> > charles.askin@saic.com
> >

-- 
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Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
                         
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Received on Tuesday, 29 April 2003 12:32:10 UTC