- From: Felix Sasaki <fsasaki@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:03:16 +0900
- To: Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>
- CC: public-i18n-its@w3.org
Richard Ishida wrote: > Having read the example Felix mentioned at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200710/msg00161.html , I agree that it is poor, since attributes shouldn't contain translatable text. > > [1] > I'm not convinced that the following is appropriate (adapted from Felix's response): > > <its:langRule selector="//dictionary/term/@name" langPointer="//dictionary/@lang2"/> > > Since the langRule global rule is, as I understand it, responsible only for equating markup such as @lang or @language etc with @xml:lang - not for assigning values to random elements in the document in this way. The ITS spec expresses this with the words "The langRule element is intended only as a fall-back mechanism for documents where language is identified with another construct." > > Am I correct? > > > [2] > However, I think I can see a very scenario where it may be useful for authors to set global rules to define language in a way that I don't think is covered by ITS at the moment. > > If you had: > > <dictionary xml:lang="en" lang1="en" lang2="fr"> > <term> > <lang1>Computer</lang1> > <lang2 xml:lang="fr">Ordinateur</lang2> > </term> > <term> > <lang1>Software</lang1> > <lang2 xml:lang="fr">Logiciel</lang2> > </term> > <term> > <lang1>File</lang1> > <lang2 xml:lang="fr">Fichier</lang2> > </term> > </dictionary> > > It might make life easier for an author if they didn't have to specify the language for lang2 elements every time. You could do this in two ways: > > 1. you could obtain the language for all lang2 elements (unless overridden locally by xml:lang) by pointing to the value of @lang2 on the <dictionary> tag using a global rule. > > 2. you could specify the value directly, in a global rule, as one does for translate. > I had some offline discussion with Yves about this, and I think (that we think?) the problem is that this might break xml:lang : an xml:lang processor does not know about its:langRule , lang1 and lang2. Not specifying xml:lang="fr" at lang2 elements will leave this processor "blind". But yes, you are right, this is probably a "v.next" discussion ... Felix > An external ITS Rules documentation would be sufficient if this format was only ever used for one pair of languages, and in one direction. If the format was used for a variety of language pairings, however, you would have to have an its:langRule in the <head>, so that the author could declare the default language of the lang2 (and lang1) elements based on how the document was being used. > > Perhaps that's one for ITS v2? > > RI > > > PS: Since I don't think that the approaches above are feasible with current version of ITS, I think this rules out the need for its:langRule to be available in global rules inside the document at the moment. Which means we don't need to change BP1. > > > > > ============ > Richard Ishida > Internationalization Lead > W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) > > http://www.w3.org/International/ > http://rishida.net/blog/ > http://rishida.net/ > > > > >
Received on Wednesday, 31 October 2007 17:03:31 UTC