RE: [widgets PC] i18n comment 21: i18n string

(personal response)

Having case-sensitive file/folder matching is going to lead to frustrated authors being unable to figure out why their localizations don't work. If there is no way to do case-less matching in the widget engine itself, I think your solution is workable. While it would be nice to recommend using the BCP 47 case conventions, if you don't, you need to really highlight the casing requirements in packaging.

The original point of this editorial comment is that your XML examples should show the expected case folding of language tags. While perfectly legal to show them as all lowercase, it is just as legal to scream them in uppercase or use alternating case or otherwise make them look "odd". By adding a recommendation to your document to use the case conventions in BCP 47 (which I see as unnecessary), but not using that recommendation in your examples, and then having a separate case convention buried elsewhere in your document you risk confusion.

I think your text for the "folder based localization" section is good. I would put it directly following the first paragraph and I would reword it as follows:

--
Although BCP 47 recommends a particular case-folding convention, the use of upper or lowercase letters has no meaning in a language tag. Because folders inside a widget package are treated by the user-agent in a case-sensitive manner, the names of the folders inside a 'locale' folder MUST be all lowercase. All language tags are mapped to lowercase for matching purposes (although they can appear in any form in the configuration file or elsewhere).
--

And I would replace your text in "The xml:lang Attribute" section with a pointer to the warning above. Perhaps:

--
Although BCP 47 recommends that language tags be casefolded in a particular way for presentation, case has no meaning in a language tag. Because user-agents map all language tags to lowercase because they treat file names in a case-sensitive manner, all examples in this document use lowercase as a reminder to authors. See [[folder-based localizations]].
--

Addison 

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect (Lab126)
Chair (W3C I18N, IETF IRI WGs)

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-i18n-core-request@w3.org [mailto:public-i18n-core-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Marcos Caceres
> Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 7:08 AM
> To: Richard Ishida
> Cc: public-i18n-core@w3.org; public-webapps@w3.org
> Subject: Re: [widgets PC] i18n comment 21: i18n string
> 
> On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>
> wrote:
> > Comment from the i18n review of:
> > http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets/

> >
> > Comment 21
> > At http://www.w3.org/International/reviews/0907-widgets-pc/

> > Editorial/substantive: E
> > Tracked by: AP
> >
> > Location in reviewed document:
> > General
> >
> > Comment:
> > Language tags are presented as lowercase. While case has no
> meaning in language tags, they are typically canonicalized (and are
> recommended to use) the case conventions in BCP 47. See
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp47#section-2.1.1

> >
> 
> That is no problem for when language tags appear in xml:lang, as
> they
> are cononicalized to lower-case. However, following BCP 47 would
> cause
> issues with matching folders, as they are treated as case sensitive.
> 
> In the "Folder-based localization" section, I've added the
> following
> to the authoring guidelines:
> 
> "Because folders inside a widget package are treated by the user
> agent
> as case sensitive, the names of the folders inside a locale folder
> need to be in lower-case. Unfortunately, this violates the case
> conventions recommended in BCP 47. "
> 
> In the "The xml:lang Attribute" section of the spec, I've added the
> following to the authoring guidelines:
> 
> "Please note that, while case has no meaning in language tags, it
> is
> recommend that with xml:lang authors use the case conventions
> recommended in BCP 47."
> 
> --
> Marcos Caceres
> Opera Software ASA, http://www.opera.com/

> http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Tuesday, 29 June 2010 15:38:09 UTC