[Comment on xml-i18n-bp WD] 2.3 meta vs. non-meta

Section 2.3, "Avoid translatable attributes" and "Do not put 
translatable text in attributes" bothers me a little. There are many 
valid reasons to put human readable text in attributes that dio not 
involve translation. For instance,

* In narrative documents, when all markup is stripped what;s left shoudl 
be a legible plain text document

* Sometimes meta-information that belongs in an attribute is human readable.

These don't negate your reasons why you don't want to put human readable 
text in an attribute; but they are in tension with it.

The inability to have mixed language attributes is perhaps not so big a 
problem in practice. Attributes don't carry substructure. Anything 
that's really complex enough to have a lot of substructre tends to go in 
an element anyway.

The alt attribute is a really good example. This really should be an 
attribute for every reason *except* internationalization. Secondly, 
since img is an empty element it can carry its own xml:lang attribute 
that applies only to its attribute text.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim

Received on Tuesday, 23 May 2006 10:10:47 UTC