RE: WOFF and extended metadata

Some feedback on latest format updates:

1. Localization and fallback: we must define rules to handle the case where the user
prefers German content but no content for her language is available in the block.

2. Localization and rendering: how does the user pick his preferred language and whether
they can override it for font metadata is something we should talk about. It follows from
#1 that users may not always get the language they want, even from the fallback rules,
and may want to switch to other available languages. Even if it's to say the browser
should handle this the same way it does for web pages, it should be mentioned.

3. Localization attribute: the current design sets a lang attribute on leaf nodes and 
stores all localized data in one document instance . As it seems that most items in the 
document can be localized, an alternative would be to tag the root element for language 
and allow the metadata block to contain multiple documents. The fallback rules would apply 
at document level. It'd allow translating attributes that currently aren't such as roles, 
too. (If that matters; I'm unclear on the actual requirements or use-cases here i.e. what
should be localizable and what shouldn't)

It would be consistent with the way localization is handled in many other applications including
the web itself: when you get a page in Russian it may have the same markup as its en-us version
but all the content is in Russian i.e. it doesn't appear that way because the browser hides those
leaf nodes tagged for German, French etc. 

The downside being that any metadata that does not need translation - esp. in the extension
area as well as any private XML people embed  - would have to be repeated as well. But since 
we do not know what will be done or why in this respect, it remains a possibility. I personally 
don't mind adding simple constraints that will keep extensions simple and relevant to all users :)

(And yes, I know some fonts already use this schema but it's not yet standardized and no one
renders it that I know of)

4. Text element: it is unclear why a text element is needed, especially in the extension area where
it adds an extra level of depth for little apparent reason beyond copying what's done in the main
document. Allowing multiple instances of the same element as long as they're in different languages 
should be sufficient. And if the whole document was in one language then these nodes could be entirely 
eliminated from the structure.

Received on Wednesday, 2 June 2010 14:57:05 UTC