- From: Lieske, Christian <christian.lieske@sap.com>
- Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 18:36:35 +0100
- To: <public-i18n-its@w3.org>
Hello, During yesterday's confCall we discussed the idea of a generic approach towards handling all sorts of constraints (e.g. related to container size). I took the action item to elaborate. Please find my initial thoughts below. They do not only touch constraints but some additional thoughts we already exchanged as well. I apologize in advance for not being able to participate in any possible immediate discussion related to this. I will be on vacation for some days. Best regards, Christian --- Design time tools, runtime engines, workflow related to software production sometimes place constraints/requirements on the data/code that is produced. Examples: 1. necessity to encode message strings in 7-bit ASCII 2. length restriction for an item in a drop-down list 3. requirement to capitalize the text in a menu entry 4. the marketing-related directive not to localize a product name It is not unlikely that these constraints have to be known to people and applications related to the localization or translation of data/code. Accordingly, the constraints have to be communicated or transferred efficiently. A generic approach for the communication of constraints could be gleaned from what has been done in the realm of cascading stylesheets (CSS). CSS provides a number of mechanisms for communicating mostly style-related information. Several features of CSS might be worthwhile looking at: 1. location of information CSS allows three locations for placing information a. inline attached to elements (for example: <p style="color:red">) b. centrally attached to data instance/document (in <style type="text/css">...</style>) c. centrally but externalized (and e.g. referenced as <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="formats.css">) 2. naming scheme CSS features a naming scheme which categories style properties. All background-related information is for example prefixed by "background": background background-attachment background-color background-image background-position background-repeat 3. addressing In CSS, so-called selectors can be used to associate information with particular pieces of content. "div > p" for example designates all "p" elements appearing in a "div" element. 4. mechanism and rules for combination CSS allows to combine information from different locations (see above). Communication of constraints with an internationalization tag set could work similar to the communication of style-related information with CSS. One example of an inline constraint which follows these ideas is given below. It combines thoughts on constraints with some of the ideas we already discussed wrt. localization directives. The main vehicle here is the provision of the span-like element "loc". <h1 id="101">Introduction to <loc=" Obj-type:term; reference-termBase:'urn:myCompany:termBase:ProductX'; reference-conceptID:43; reference-termID:65; note-forlocalizer:'Check the term base for a possible update'; action-translate:no; constraint-allowedchars:ASCII-7; constraint-maxwidth:20; constraint-widthUnit:char; "> Document Management </loc> </h1> The example tries to capture several things 1. some of the categories (by means of a naming scheme based on prefixes):mentioned in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-its/2005JanMar/0028.html 2. some of the properties listed in Yves' book (pages 148 ff) 3. a possibility to attach information to terms (by naming a concept-oriented term base, a concept identifier and a term identifier); the value 'term' for 'Obj-type' from my understanding could be further specified along the lines of ISO 12620 The comparison with CSS only occurred to me when I started writing, so I am not sure whether I should have brought this idea into the open so quickly. Hopefully, however, its helpful since it may enable us to draw on work already done
Received on Friday, 11 March 2005 17:37:10 UTC