Re: WOFF and extended metadata

On 8 Jun 2010, at 19:27, Adam Twardoch (List) wrote:

> I believe the top-level localization split is much more sensible. ...

> With the metadata, the localized items seem to me to be more like UI
> strings in applications -- and in app development, localized UI strings
> typically stored in separate branches, one per language. This seems much
> more logical to me, and certainly easier to handle and to implement.

I'd argue strongly against a top-level language split.

Applications generally expect a complete set of strings for a given language, allowing them to ignore data for unused languages entirely (as I think Mac OS 10.6 does, to the point of not installing them).

An XML scheme to handle arbitrary metadata will deal with technical data that does not require any language tagging (for example, much of the info in EPAR) as well as data designed for human consumption. It strikes me as important that semantically identical elements (i.e. translations) are kept close together; the alternative is to incorporate a structural vulnerability such that two language branches might represent entirely different semantics, and only the bilingual would notice a problem.

I'd appreciate some morsels of feedback to this proposal:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-font/2010AprJun/0304.html

- L

Received on Friday, 11 June 2010 15:57:23 UTC