Minutes: GEO telecon 040901

MINUTES: I18N GEO TF telcon, 2004-09-01 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), Susan K Miller (Boeing), Russ Rolfe (Microsoft) 

Scribe: Deborah Cawkwell

Agenda

Re-chartering
Testing


Info Share

Thanks to Pasquale Popolizio, there is now a language-negotiated Italian translation available of the tutorial "Using language information in XHTML, HTML and CSS".
- Italian: http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-lang/Overview.it.html
- English: http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html

Also Swedish translation of another GEO doc being worked on. ("Character Encodings" http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html )

Unicode conference next week to be attended by RI, TT, MD. 
GEO presentations: 
- RI three, two of which using materials developed with GEO
- MD/TT
- I18N Web Services.


Meetings

No meeting next week due to Unicode conference.
Next meeting Wednesday 15 September at usual time.


Review of GEO Work Items:

To continue with GEO work items: http://www.w3.org/International/2003/plan.html
SM to send draft FAQ (What is the difference between localization and internationalization?) for initial review.


Discussions

Re-chartering update

As part of process, we need to move to the new patent policy. It was decided to do that by re-chartering current group, rather than do it with two working groups. A note has been sent to AC reps of member companies for their acceptance. There have only been four out of nine responses so far. Organisations who have not responded include: BBC, Microsoft, Siemens, IBM, and Boeing

Action: DC (BBC), SM (Boeing), RR (Microsoft) to remind their AC rep as soon as possible. If they have any problems, they should be reported back to RI.

Little has progressed over the past two weeks whilst RI has been away. There are some small points to settle with new GEO and core charters. This should be resolved at the latest during the Unicode conference. Then this will be sent for review to the W3C management team, then there will be a note to AC reps for approval of charters and then a renewed call for participation. RI hopes this will be completed by the end of October.


Testing

(For base UAs we've identified as well as latest versions; when/if updated the next latest version will be added.)

DC is working on testing. She had sent an email regarding the testing remit comparing different tests, some of which functioned as demonstrations with visual comparisons, some of which did not contain such representations.

RI explained that the basic philosophy of GEO tested is as demonstrated by the CSS group. However, their tests are written solely for QA engineers, where those tests need to be processed very quickly. They use colour effectively and keep tests short and focused with one test per page. In the case of CSS tests, the QA process only stops when there is a problem. 

Our tests may be adapted for use in the same way, although at the same time, our tests are meant to be educational, so there is sometimes intentionally additional material. GEO tests have a dual purpose. The user-tester will not necessarily be looking for one specific result. With the test: 'Using link for alternative language versions of document' (http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-link), there is no behaviour described in any W3C specification; browsers may handle in different ways to the end user that the same information exists in different languages and that they can choose the page containing that information. 

In GEO, we are investigating how I18N aspects of web pages are handled by different UAs, eg, scrollbar being presented on the left-hand side in Internet Explorer is not a feature specified by a W3C specification. 

DC asked if such I18N features *should* be specified formally by the W3C. RI said that there is a distinction between W3C specifications and UA design, however if we think a specific feature should be included, then we can put it forward.

The meeting agreed that more information at the top of the page could be provided explaining the function of such as test as 'Using link for alternative language versions of document' (http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-link).

[Russ left meeting.]

(General) next steps for testing:
- decide what other tests are needed
- create those tests
- develop some way of reporting results of those tests

Regarding the third point, RI had an interim solution, eg, http://people.w3.org/rishida/articles/test-link-alt and http://people.w3.org/rishida/articles/lang-and-cjk-font.html. This solution was a agreed as an acceptable imterim way forward. [RI ed note: however such pages should be part of the W3C site]

Discussion regarding how to approach the test for which UAs support Unicode. RI suggested that the following two tests might be useful for this: http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-utf8-signature-1.html and http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-escape-1.html.

Moving testing forwards, RI and DC to identify a specific list of tests for a particular document, ie  language techniques (http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html). This list will then be circulated to the GEO group. DC to identify and then to discuss with Richard on Friday (3 September) morning. 


ACTIONS

All GEO work items: http://www.w3.org/International/2003/plan.html
SM to send draft FAQ (What is the difference between localization and internationalization?) to RI for initial review.
DC, SM, RR to remind AC reps to respond to new patent policy request.
DC to identify tests in language techniques document (http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html)
DC and RI to discuss the above on Friday 3 September (am).

Received on Thursday, 2 September 2004 16:00:26 UTC