Re: [Serial] I18N WG last call comments

Hello Henry,

Many thanks for your responses. The I18N WG (Core TF) has looked
at your response below, and unfortunately, we have to say that we
cannot accept it. At the least, we need some more information
exchange to make sure we understand each other well.

Below, you write that the convention of inserting a space isn't
for linguistic separation, but for creating XML Schema lists.
This may be the intention of the spec-writers, but who guarantees
that this is how this will be used? In cases where it will be used
in other ways, there would be serious problems when adapting a
query or transformation to a different language (in particular
Chinese, Japanese, Thai,...).

So in particular, we need to know more about the following questions:
- How/when/why would sequences of strings (or other atomic data types)
   typically be generated?
- How would e.g. combinations of data values, strings,... be serialized
   other than though this mechanism? We think that in many cases, in
   particular for XML Query, this could be the mechanism of choice to
   write out texts mixed with e.g. stringified numbers.
- What would the effort be to change a script relying on this mechanism
   so that it works for Chinese/Japanese,...?
- How can the distinction between strings and text nodes be used to
   affect/create the right behavior, and how can we make sure that
   programmers use the solution that is easily adapted to all kinds
   of languages.

Regards,    Martin.


At 11:55 04/04/28 -0400, Henry Zongaro wrote:

>Hello,
>
>      In [1], Martin Duerst submitted the following comment on the Last
>Call Working Draft of XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization on behalf of
>the I18N Working Group:
>
> > [5] Section 2, point 3: "each separated by a single space":
> >    Inserting a space may not be the right thing, in particular for
> >    Chinese, Japanese, Thai,... which don't have spaces between words.
> >    This has to be checked very carefully.
>
>      Thanks to Martin and the working group for this comment.
>
>      The XSL and XML Query Working Groups discussed the comment, and
>decided that no change to the Serialization specification is required. The
>reason for separating each pair of string values by a single space is not
>to achieve any kind of linguistic separation of words, but to separate
>values in a way that would be consistent with the requirements for an XML
>Schema type derived by list, for instance.
>
>      May I ask the I18N Working Group to confirm that this response is
>acceptable?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Henry [On behalf of the XSL and XML Query Working Groups]
>[1]
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2004Feb/0362.html
>[2]
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2004Feb/0401.html
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>Henry Zongaro      Xalan development
>IBM SWS Toronto Lab   T/L 969-6044;  Phone +1 905 413-6044
>mailto:zongaro@ca.ibm.com

Received on Wednesday, 5 May 2004 08:15:40 UTC