Minutes: GEO telecon 040811

MINUTES: I18N GEO TF telcon, 2004-08-04 at 16:00 UTC/GMT, 9am Seattle, 12noon Boston, 17:00 London, 18:00 Paris, 2am Melbourne

Attendees: Richard Ishida (Chair I18N GEO), Deborah Cawkwell (BBC World Service), Andrew Cunningham (State Library of Victoria), Susan K Miller (Boeing), Russ Rolfe (Microsoft), Tex Texin (XenCraft) 

Scribe: Deborah Cawkwell 


Agenda additions

RI: what to do with last section in language techniques document 


Info Share

New test from AC & RI relating to link element (http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-link).


Meetings

NO MEETINGS FOR REST OF AUGUST
Will resume Wednesday 1 September at the same time.


Review of GEO Work Items:

http://www.w3.org/International/2003/plan.html

Article development process (http://www.w3.org/International/geo/2004/article-devt-process.html)
RI has written up process stuff & chunked up into names/states in the process. This formalised process does not preclude writing a document without stating intent.

DC & RI to discuss tests on Friday by telephone.

AC test (Position of meta charset wrt title element): will be starting this week or next week. RI thinks may need two different pages.

No news from Lloyd. No news from Leslie Fountain (LF) re clarification of usability testing. RI to contact Francois Richard (FR). 

DC article (Unicode/character encoding and bytes) move to to do section. 

SM Will start a new FAQ: What is the difference between internationalization, localization & globalization?


Discussion

See http://www.w3.org/International/2003/plan.html#meeting


Article development process (Link: http://www.w3.org/International/geo/2004/article-devt-process.html)
Question for the meeting: Can it be sent to Core for perusal (not for any sort of official sign-off)?
Group agreed to send to core.


Language: Definitions (http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html#ri20040808.100519373)
Question for the meeting: Can we accept the text? 
Group agreed ok, but RR to send any comments via email


Using non-ASCII characters in Web addresses (http://www.w3.org/International/articles/idn-and-iri/)http://www.w3.org/International/articles/idn-and-iri/)
Question for the meeting: Any suggestions?
- Agreed that on the right track. RI: Not very much simple information generally available. The objective was to produce something acceptable to managers & others with a general idea of what is going on. 
- RR question: more talk about using UTF-8, than using punycode; only one example of punycode & 3 of UTF-8. RI: part of the reason is that punycopde is only used for transfer of domain names: only converted to punycode to transmit across the wire. RI: to clarify relationship between punycode & Unicode; maybe needs to add something re how punycode goes across in HTTP header. 
- DC had circulated within her team at work: their feeling was that this work was 'in the future'. RI: to clarify. There are issues around rollout at country levels . One problem is that IE doesn't support natively; Mozilla does work natively. 
- RR naming: do you call this an IRI in the document? The term IRI essentially just means a URI using non-ASCII characters, and can include the domain part. The IRI spec, on the other hand, is used to explain how the path is handled, since the domain name uses the punycode approach. RI to clarify this further in the doc.
- Agreed that clarification required of the three parts (protocol, domain name, resource location) mentioned in the document, possibly more graphical (already suggestd by Martin D). 

TT joined meeting 



Additional agenda item: What to do with last section in language techniques documents (http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html#ri20040808.14201151)

- RI: Splitting of hreflang & link element. Agreed that link element should not be in this document. Discussion on where it should be. Could be a document on 'navigation'. In an older version, there were sections on site design & links, both could be appropriate. Agreed that the links information could be in another 'future' techniques document, so section 8 should be removed. Also agreed that a useful FAQ could be generating in the interim. AC to write FAQ: how do I use the link element to point to different localized versions of the document?

- Discussion re re-using blocks of text: whether to duplicate or cross-reference. There are issues around usability in terms of one-stop-shop, document flow & good content management processes. There was discussion re the future, where RI hoped that the overview document would be the point of entry. TT argued that dependency in such a way on one document was not consistent with the way hyperlinking & the web are best organised; the user may have a different entry point. RI was concerned that if the entry point was via a search engine, then the user may be presented with the same information in multiple places. It was agreed that the text be dealt with in depth in one place & outlined at a higher level in other place with a pointer to the more detailed information. 

- Discussion re types of documents/GEO information structure. RI felt it would be great to have lots of little how-to documents, eg how to get localized variants of numbered lists, how to apply :lang. RR felt that information structure was offered via the FAQ. Also, RI wondered whether tutorials should be shorter. Currently a tutorial is defined (in part) by inclusion of slides. TT: useful 'how-to' link for lists with CSS: http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/.


Additional items

TT: question re I18N Test Suite: Using link for alternative language versions of document (http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-link)- how do we know that lang and xml:lang refer to the link attribute text rather than the target. RI: HTML spec says lang is for describing the language of elements, and doesn't say it does anything special when used with link element - hreflang is for that. 

TT: Comment on example in techniques section on link element: uses web pages with same name & different extensions, but this doesn't need to be the case. This could be usefully be brought out in the FAQ, so that users don't assume there has to be a relationship. There is no requirement to point to language-negociated files.

Search & language information
RI: has been in touch with Google about how language information is used. It seems that meta content language tag is not used currently. Does TT know to what extent does Yahoo use lang info? especially the meta content language tag. Agreement that there are no definite answers as to whether this is used or not, which is difficult because if it's not used then it would make sense to deprecate. TT to feed back if/when he can. 

Use of GEO mailing list
- pros & cons of having non-WG members on the GEO list.
- some discomfort/lack of confidence in terms of different sorts of skill, eg, technical, writing, etc, sometimes with a wider audience than the WG for first drafts.
- useful for comments
- W3C mailing lists are publicly archived, so ultimately/very quickly the information is open to all
- group to consider over two week 'holiday' period.


ACTIONS

See also GEO work items: http://www.w3.org/International/2003/plan.html

SM: Email notice of intent: FAQ: what is the difference between internationalization, localization & globalization? 
RR: Send any comments re Language: Definitions (http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html#ri20040808.100519373)
RI: In Using non-ASCII characters in Web addresses (http://www.w3.org/International/articles/idn-and-iri/): clarification re: 
- roles of punycode & UTF-8 (RR)
- how 'in the future' (DC)
- IRI & naming (RR)
AC: FAQ: how do I use the link element to point to different localized versions of the document?
RI: Remove section 8 from last section in language techniques documents (http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html#ri20040808.14201151); keep in a holding document for a future techniques document.

All: Work hard whilst RI is on holiday.

 

 


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Received on Thursday, 12 August 2004 19:28:42 UTC