RE: [ESW Wiki] Update of "geoQuickTips" by RichardIshida

Tex, 

Thanks for these suggestions.  We discussed in our telecon, and decided to
leave the cards as they are at the moment, but reconsider when we come to
print the next batch.  Note that we will also have an annotated version of
the quick tips on the web site, with additional links, and that page is
pointed to from the card.

Cheers,
RI


============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tex Texin
> Sent: 25 November 2005 11:36
> To: Richard Ishida
> Cc: 'GEO'
> Subject: Re: [ESW Wiki] Update of "geoQuickTips" by RichardIshida
> 
> 
> Yo!
> 
> 1) On "exceptional circumstances" in escapes, I wonder if it 
> is a difference between american and british...
> I'll have to check. To me, exceptional implies rarity, and 
> although the reasons for using escapes might be exceptions in 
> some sense, they are not rare. The FAQ on the subject was fine.
> 
> On the others, I guess if brevity makes the tips misleading, 
> then we are better off without the tips.
> It is hard enough to get people to do the right thing with 
> proper explanations.
> 
> What are the cards that are referred to? Are the tips to be 
> like the WAI pocket cards that were given out a while ago?
> 
> If so, then I have a constructive suggestion.
> If it proves to be too difficult to make the brief statements 
> correct and complete, then use questions.
> The questions can prompt for the same issues, causing people 
> to think and be reminded of the considerations, and it can 
> also refer to a web page which lists the questions, answers 
> and points to more detailed documents.
> 
> There is a good book "Are your lights on?" which gives an 
> example of the problem of getting people to turn their lights 
> off when leaving a tunnel, and providing instructions for the 
> various lighting conditions upon exit (day/night, cloudy, 
> stormy etc.) proved too detailed. Simply asking "Are your 
> lights on?" served to have people consider whether or not 
> they should turn them off...
> 
> So something like:
> 
> Are escapes used unnecessarily?
> Are strings concatenated?
> Are encodings suitable and declared appropriately?
> Are styles separated into CSS stylesheets and named 
> logically, and markup used for semantics?
> Does the html element have language and direction attributes?
> Do you provide users options for other languages?
> Does your web site pass html, xml, and css validation?
> Are images, animation, and other media suitable for global 
> use, or localized appropriately? 
> Are appropriate data formats (date, number, etc.) used for 
> each market?
> 
> 
> This approach also gives you the ability to expand the scope 
> in the web page without having to change the cards.
> For example, if you wanted to say something about flash 
> localization it could be added to the answer for the question 
> about images and media, even though at the time of the 
> printing of the card, flash wasn't considered.
> 
> Just a thought.
> tex
> 
> 
> Richard Ishida wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Tex, Thanks for the comments.  See inline...
> > 
> > ============
> > Richard Ishida
> > Internationalization Lead
> > W3C
> > 
> > http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
> > http://www.w3.org/International/
> > http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
> > 
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org 
> > > [mailto:public-i18n-geo-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tex Texin
> > > Sent: 25 November 2005 04:27
> > > To: GEO
> > > Subject: Re: [ESW Wiki] Update of "geoQuickTips" by RichardIshida
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > These quick tips need links to justifications and 
> explanations. As 
> > > written some of them seem inappropriate.
> > 
> > Andrew is looking at links for the Web page version, and I 
> plan to add 
> > new interlinear explanations to the Web page version too.  
> So this is in hand.
> > 
> > >
> > > a) "Escapes: Only use escapes for characters in exceptional 
> > > circumstances; use numeric character references rather than 
> > > character entities if possible"
> > >
> > > There are many good reasons for using escapes, such as clarifying 
> > > visual ambiguity. I wouldn't think these reasons are "exceptional 
> > > circumstances".
> > 
> > Compared to the way authors typically use escapes (see eg. 
> > interventions on the WSG list) I see those as exceptional 
> > circumstances.  Alternative wordings welcome.
> > 
> > >
> > > Why are numeric references prefered? They are less 
> recgonizable and 
> > > therefore less friendly. When I am reading someone else's 
> source, I 
> > > would much rather see entities than references. And some 
> authors and 
> > > tools generate decimal NCRs, which are of course useless 
> to those of 
> > > us entrenched in unicode.
> > 
> > I agree that this is probably too detailed for the quick tips.  For 
> > more info, see the last para in the section 
> > http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-escapes#not
> > 
> > >
> > > b) Navigation: On each page include clearly visible navigation to 
> > > any localized pages or sites...
> > >
> > > Although I agree with having navigation on pages within a 
> website, 
> > > as a quicktip this seems to be more emphatic that it should be. 
> > > There are many places where this would be inappropriate. I assume 
> > > you are referring to links to an equivalent localized page of the 
> > > current page. If you just mean navigating to the home page in 
> > > another language, that is less problematic, but perhaps also not 
> > > needed on every page.
> > >
> > > c) On encodings you seem to be suggesting declaring the 
> encoding in 
> > > both the page and the http protocol. Is that the case?
> > 
> > Yes. This is consistent with advice in our tutorials and techniques 
> > documents, though it is not possible to express anything with much 
> > subtlety in the Quick Tips format.  Note that Quick Tips 
> are far from 
> > a perfect medium for conveying information, but they have 
> great value 
> > in sensitizing people to issues and prompting them to find out more.
> > 
> > (Note also that many of your comments seem to relate to the longer 
> > version, which may nopw be radically changed, given the new shorter 
> > versions we have
> > produced.)
> > 
> > >
> > > d) For #10 validate. It should link to the validation pages.
> > > The recommendation to refer to the other site materials should be 
> > > separate.
> > 
> > #10 will of course link to validation pages and other 
> locations from 
> > the Web site version.  Unfortunately splitting them will 
> put an extra 
> > strain on space for the cards. Note that this is exactly 
> based on the 
> > final WAI quick tip, which has been through much discussion too.  
> > Unfortunately we have to work within almost impossible 
> constraints here.
> > 
> > Thanks for taking the time to send these comments.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > RI
> > 
> > >
> > > More when I have more time.
> > > tex
> > >
> 
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898   mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
> Xen Master                          http://www.i18nGuy.com
>                          
> XenCraft		            http://www.XenCraft.com
> Making e-Business Work Around the World
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>

Received on Wednesday, 18 January 2006 14:35:28 UTC