RE: Liam's comments on Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization 1.0, 9th October 2003 draft

Hello Liam,

Thankyou for your comments on the first WD of  Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization.  Please find responses below.

The version you commented on is http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-i18n-html-tech-20031009/

Note also that we intend to release new working drafts before the AC meeting.  We have, in the meantime, split the original document up into 3 topic-focussed documents.  We aim to produce more such documents as we develop the material.  The in-edit versions of the new documents are:
  Characters and Encodings 1.0 
  http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-character.html
  Specifying the language of content 1.0 
  http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html
  Handling Bidirectional Text 1.0 
  http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-bidi.html

There is also a new outline overview document at http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/outline/html-authoring-outline.html



> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-i18n-comments-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-i18n-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Liam Quin
> Sent: 10 October 2003 16:14
> To: www-i18n-comments@w3.org
> Subject: Liam's comments on Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML 
> Internationalization 1.0, 9th October 2003 draft
> 
> 
> Some quick comments on:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-i18n-html-tech-20031009/
> 
> 
> [1]
> "How to use this docuemnts" tells people to "click on icons", is there 
> an accessibility issue there?  The icons don't have tooltips -- maybe 
> they need alt and title attribtes.  I had no a priori idea what they 
> did.


The latest versions of these documents (see above) and their accompanying outline work differently, so this is not an issue.  Currently there is only an icon to take you back to the toc in the outline, and I have ensured that the title and alt information is available for that.



> 
> [2] 2.2 item 2
> In case of conflict, the Content-Type charset declaration and the XML 
> declaration have precedence over the meta charset statement, according 
> to the HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 specifications. [Ed. note: Is this true 
> in practise? esp wrt IE?]
> 
> It's true neither in practise nor according to the XML specification.
> The HTTP Mime charset parameter overrides the encoding (if
> any) given in any XML declaration. 


That is indeed what we were trying to say.  The new version no longer
contains this sentence.


> 
> [3] 2.2 further down (it'd help if the itens were numbered) 
> The meta declaration must only be used when the character 
> encoding is organized such that ASCII-valued bytes stand for 
> ASCII characters (at least until the meta element is parsed). 
> [Ed. note: How true is this?]
> 
> If you send a document in ebcdic to IE, a meta element isn't 
> going to help you.  IE won't be able to parse the "<" sign 
> let alone "M" "E" "T"
> "A" :-)


True.  But we see this as a fringe case these days, and we hope that people
will choose other encodings than ebcdic in the future.  Those using ebcdic
should certainly use the HTTP header to declare the encoding, even though IE
(I'm not sure how many others) can detect and handle ebcdic currently.  We
will add a note to this effect.


> 
> 
> [4] NNavigator
> 
> Probably you should use Mozila, not Netscape Navigator, now 
> that Netscape has disbanded its browser team.

That has already been addressed in the latest version of the outline.  We
will also change in the three WDs before publication.



> 
> [5] 3.2 Specifying...
> 
> According to the HTML specification, in a case of conflict 
> the HTTP charset declaration has the highest priority of all 
> means of declaring the character set.
> 
> Correct.  Please make 2.2 consistent with this.


See above.



> 
> [6] 3.3 Avoid escapes when the characters to be expressed are 
> representable in the character encoding of the document.
> 
> Why?  It can be very convenient in some environments, for 
> example, to stick to 7-bit ("ASCII") values and to use 
> character references for all codpoints that require 8 or more 
> bits.  This can make document transportation and processing 
> significantly more robust.


I'm not sure we can argue for better internationalization by recommending
the use of ASCII.  Note that we are talking specifically about HTML/XHTML
pages here.  Do you have some specific examples you could share with us?



> 
> [7] 3.3
> 
> Suggest ading a note about where character references can be 
> used -- e.g. you can't use them to escape characters in element names.
> Maybe not necessary.


Well probably not necessary in this particular document, since it is largely
concerned with the HTML vocabulary and we don't expect the majority of our
audience to be creating new tags.  Worth mentioning elsewhere though.



> 
> [8] 6.5
> 
> Suggest documenting interaction with <span> and inline bidi 
> text; RTL and LTR marks are evil becasue non-hierarchical and 
> stateful.


We disagree and wonder whether you are thinking about the RLE and LRE (with
PDF) characters.  We agree that the latter shouldn't be used for the reason
you mention. Perhaps we should make the distinction clearer and point to
http://www.w3.org/TR/unicode-xml/#Bidi .  In fact, we could even add a
technique saying 'don't use RLE/RLO/etc'.

For information about RTL and LTR see
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/#where (you
might want to read the whole article).



> 
> [9] 6.7 Overriding
> in the example box, the Hebrew text is in three different 
> sizes or fonts in the three places it appears.  Very minor 
> and probably a browser bug.

The first two examples are of code, so are in a code element.  The third
shows what appears on the UI, so it is just normal text.  It's not clear to
me why there would be 3 different appearances.  Do you still see it in
section 8 of http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-bidi.html ?



> 
> [1] Overall
> As the draft is edited further, it might be an idea to reduce 
> some of the redundancy and combine some of the topics.  E.g. 
> logical vs visual order for Hebrew, dir="rtl" to html or 
> body.  Repeated text can make people think they lost their 
> place, or can mean people read the wrong section or get confused.


The new approach removes this issue.  We don't repeat the detail text any
more, though we may point to it from various places in the overview
document.


> 
> *
> 
> I hope these comments help - I think this will be a very 
> useful document and look forward to seeing future drafts!


Many thanks for taking the time to review it!
Best regards,

Richard
For the GEO TF


> 
> Liam
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, liam at w3.org, 
> http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/ http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
>

Received on Thursday, 6 May 2004 17:12:41 UTC