[widgets] ITS in Widgets

Dear i18n core,

I'm writing on behalf of the Web Apps WG about the possibility of 
conducting a joint teleconference to discuss some issues with the ITS 
[1] features in the Widgets 1.0 Family of Specifications.

Basically, we would like to discuss:

1. Moving ITS functionality out of the Widgets Packaging and 
Configuration specification to a separate specification.

2. Clarifying some aspects of how content that uses ITS functionality is 
processed, so to address an API issue that is discussed below.

As you may recall, the WebApps WG collaborated with i18n to integrate 
ITS functionality into the Widgets Packaging and Configuration (P&C) 
specification [2]: namely, the <its:span> element and its:dir attribute. 
We now have approximately 10 vendors claiming to implement P&C. 
Unfortunately, we have not managed to get a single vendor to implement 
the ITS features; and, as far as we know, none of these implementations 
intend to implement the ITS features.

The lack of commitment by vendor's to support the ITS specification in 
the P&C specification is blocking us from progressing the P&C to 
Proposed Recommendation. We must state that this is not a criticism of 
ITS, and we are unclear as to why implementers are choosing not to 
support it. Vendors have indicated that they do, however, support the 
appropriate Unicode characters to control directionality.

As we are fully committed to having a suitable i18n solution for P&C, 
the Web Apps working group would like to co-ordinate with i18n to 
address this issue at the markup level. We want to discuss the creation 
of a new specification that would add the span/dir functionality in the 
widget namespace. We are only proposing this because various members 
(Opera included) have expressed that they would be more willing to 
implement the ITS functionality if it was defined in the widget namespace.

The working group has also identified a potential issue with how ITS 
data is passed to one of our APIs [3]. The issue of accessing ITS 
marked-up content through an API is important, as currently if one has 
<name>Foo <span dir='rlt'>esrever</span> Bar</name>, one gets a string 
back in the API that loses the direction information. The Web Apps 
Working Group believes that an orthogonal specification could address 
this issue.

Although short notice, it would be helpful if members from the i18n WG 
could join our weekly teleconf taking place on Feb 25 (starts at 3pm 
Paris time). We will send the agenda to this list on the 24th.

Kind regards,
Marcos

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/its/
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-apis/

Received on Monday, 22 February 2010 18:12:28 UTC