determining relevant language for sorting

This is a last call comment from Jim Melton (jim.melton@acm.org) on
the Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-charmod-20020430/).

Semi-structured version of the comment:

Submitted by: Jim Melton (jim.melton@acm.org)
Submitted on behalf of (maybe empty): W3C XML Query Working Group
Comment type: editorial
Chapter/section the comment applies to: 3.1.5 Units of collation
The comment will be visible to: public
Comment title: determining relevant language for sorting
Comment:
Section 3.1.5, "Units of collation", contains the statement "Note that, where searching or sorting is done dynamically, particularly in a multilingual environment, the 'relevant language' should be determined to be that of the current user, and may thus differ from user to user."

While we agree that the user's language is frequently the most reasonable choice to be used in determining a collation to be used for various operations, it is most certainly not *always* the best choice.  This is particularly true when massive amounts of data have been placed into a repository of some sort (e.g., a database) using the semantics of the data itself.  For example, database systems often enhance retrieval performance through the use of special structures ("indexes") that are created long in advance of knowing what user might be retrieving the data.  In such cases, it might be determined that the "best" default language is the language of the data, or of the repository, or of some other entity.

To ensure that the statement in Section 3.1.5 is interpreted to allow this situation, the phrase "should be determined" should ;^) be replaced with "SHOULD be determined".  By formalizing the term ("SHOULD"), the Character Model document properly recognizes that some applications require the ability to have different defaults.



Structured version of  the comment:

<lc-comment
  visibility="public" status="pending"
  decision="pending" impact="editorial">
  <originator email="jim.melton@acm.org" represents="W3C XML Query Working Group"
      >Jim Melton</originator>
  <charmod-section href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-charmod-20020430/#sec-CollationUnits'
    >3.1.5</charmod-section>
  <title>determining relevant language for sorting</title>
  <description>
    <comment>
      <dated-link date="2002-05-31"
        >determining relevant language for sorting</dated-link>
      <para>Section 3.1.5, "Units of collation", contains the statement "Note that, where searching or sorting is done dynamically, particularly in a multilingual environment, the 'relevant language' should be determined to be that of the current user, and may thus differ from user to user."

While we agree that the user's language is frequently the most reasonable choice to be used in determining a collation to be used for various operations, it is most certainly not *always* the best choice.  This is particularly true when massive amounts of data have been placed into a repository of some sort (e.g., a database) using the semantics of the data itself.  For example, database systems often enhance retrieval performance through the use of special structures ("indexes") that are created long in advance of knowing what user might be retrieving the data.  In such cases, it might be determined that the "best" default language is the language of the data, or of the repository, or of some other entity.

To ensure that the statement in Section 3.1.5 is interpreted to allow this situation, the phrase "should be determined" should ;^) be replaced with "SHOULD be determined".  By formalizing the term ("SHOULD"), the Character Model document properly recognizes that some applications require the ability to have different defaults.
</para>
    </comment>
  </description>
</lc-comment>

Received on Friday, 31 May 2002 05:28:36 UTC