some info related to internationalization in EPUB

Hi internationalization folks,

This is some background info concerning the possible collaboration  
between the internationalization activity and IDPF's EPUB e-book  
format. This is brought up in the internationalization

Murata-san, the chair of EGLS (Enhanced Global Language Support  
subgroup), has compiled the list of requirements [1], and the goal for  
the Taipei meeting next week (Oct. 5, 6) is to identify potential  
solutions. Since the participants of EGLS mostly consists of east  
Asian people, I do worry that some other internationalization  
requirements besides CJK-issues are not covered.

The following requirements raised by the participants (see the latter  
part of [1]) are not covered in the compiled version (the former part  
of [1]):

- EGLS_JT_1 Hebrew character support

I personally think this is a font issue, and it should be almost  
covered by EGLS_CG4 - Font Embedding

- EGLS_JT_2 Bi-directional text

I personally think this is already covered by EPUB 2.0.

- EGLS_JT_3 Diacritical mark placement

This I have no idea.

- EGLS_PS_R1Use UAX#14 (Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm)

This seems to be like an anti-requirement of the EGLS_LBR series. FYI,  
CSS3 Text Level 3 will probably have the 'line-break' property which  
will violate pure UAX#14.


As IDPF has a very tight schedule, the deadline for new requirements  
already past. I don't know whether it is still possible to bring up  
new requirements related to internationalization, but if you have new  
requirement, I can bring it to the Taipei meeting next week to see if  
exceptions can be made. I personally think IDPF is very  
internationalization-friendly.

EGLS might have a IRC conference meeting attomorrow at 0 am UTC, but I  
am not very sure. If you want to participate in the Taipei meeting,  
you might want to contact Murata-san.



Other internationalization related EPUB subgroups and topics that are  
beyond EGLS:

- Text Content Subgroup http://code.google.com/p/epub-revision/wiki/TextContent

    They are talking about better support for converting dictionaries  
to EPUB[3]. Can Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) be introduced to  
the format?

- Metadata Subgroup http://code.google.com/p/epub-revision/wiki/Metadata

I also think Google Translate's 'class="notranslate"'  is interesting,  
but I am not sure which EPUB subgroup this feature belongs to. (BTW,  
EPUB is currently based on XHTML which does have namespace support so  
maybe ITS is possible?).


You might also want to discuss the best solution we have for  "EGLS_O1  
Phonetics in Metadata" [4]. Can ITS cover this?

[1] http://code.google.com/p/epub-revision/wiki/EGLS_requirement_list
[2] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#line-break
[3] http://code.google.com/p/epub-revision/wiki/DictionariesGlossaries
[4] http://code.google.com/p/epub-revision/wiki/EGLS_solutions#Solutions_to_Phonetics_in_Metadata


Cheers,
Kenny

Received on Wednesday, 29 September 2010 19:35:15 UTC