[Comment on ITS WD] Role of termInfo

Comment from the i18n review of:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-its-20060518/

Comment 18
At http://www.w3.org/International/reviews/0606-its/
Editorial/substantive: S
Owner: RI

Location in reviewed document:
6.4.1

Comment: 
We think we are running against danger if we broaden the scope of the data definition so widely that any kind of information can be associated with 'terms'. The whole point of ITS is to clarify what to expect from markup. If tools don't know what to do with the data they have read in, what have we gained by using ITS?
 

We think that we should say that the information at the end of the termInfo link is a definition or relevant text to support the understanding of the term identified.


If we are too vague about what is pointed to, we will lose the advantage we were aiming for of tools understanding what the ITS markup is saying.


 (For example, some enterprising developer may decide that the terminology mechanism here provides a nice way of associating designer's notes with inline text. That would be a bad idea because one point of creating the ITS spec is that translation tools should understand what type of information they are receiving, and handle it automatically. He should use the locInfo mechanism for that.)

Received on Tuesday, 11 July 2006 19:26:21 UTC