draft of Requirement for span-like element

hi All,

Here's a possible wording for the requirement of the span-like element:
I haven't got a good name for this section yet, can anyone help out ?

	cheers,
			tim

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Description:

A span-like element is required to allow authors to mark sections text
that may have special properties, from a localisation and
internationalisation point of view. Span-like elements are required as a
general concept for the different requirements for the ITS.

[note to ITS folk : I think this is a bit vague, perhaps we could define
it more carefully ? I'm trying to suggest that the span element can be
used for several purposes, all of which we haven't defined yet (but
would be defined by the time we release the spec - I'm not suggesting it
should be a free-for-all, but that as a requirement, we do need a way to
mark sections of text for different purposes)]

Background:

This allows localisation tools to determine their behaviour on certain
sections of text. This could be for sections of text that need to be
translated by a domain-expert (as with source code fragments) or need
special terminology in order to be properly translated. In particular, a
span-like element can be useful to help translation tools determine
where to apply sentence-breaks and also to assist word-counting
algorithms. Other uses are foreseen, within the scope of the ITS.

One example would be the following sentence, which contains some source
code that we would like to treat specially during translation :

'The statement in the Java programming language,
System.out.println("Hello World!"); prints the text "Hello World!" to
standard output.'

Here, we would like to put a spanning element around the source code
fragment to indicate that it is not standard text for translation and
should be translated by a someone familiar with the Java programming
language. Also, translation tools should treat the exclamation points in
the sample text carefully with respect to sentence-segmentation if they
perform that function.

This next section of text shows a filename that should also not be
translated :

'The file /etc/passwd is a local source of information about users'
accounts.'

In this case, the filename "/etc/passwd" should not be translated, and
we would like to mark that filename with an element to indicate this.

[ Note to ITS folks :
The current list of possible uses of the span element is :

* Text that should not be segmented
* Text that should not be translated
* Text that should not be wordcounted

- are there any more that people can think of that don't directly fall
into other sections, that is, I expect we would have particular
requirements for dealing with terms, phrases, etc. elsewhere in the
requirements document.
]

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-- 
Tim Foster - Tools Engineer, Software Globalisation
http://sunweb.ireland/~timf http://blogs.sun.com/timf
http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~timf

Received on Thursday, 10 March 2005 15:11:00 UTC