Fw: FYI .. New article for REVIEW: xml:lang in XML document schemas

Richard:

Attached is a some feedback from our XML parser team here, on the new
article on xml:lang posted for review.  There seems to be some problems
with the suggestons on use of xml:lang in the article  ...

w3c i18n group may want to take this up for discussions with the xml schema
/ infoset workgroup.

Best regards, Uma
V.S. UMAmaheswaran, Ph.D.
Globalization Centre of Competency, IBM Toronto Lab
A2/SZ8, 8200 Warden Avenue, Markham, ON, Canada, L6G1C7; +1 905 413 3474;
Fax:905 413 4682; TieLine 969; email: umavs@ca.ibm.com
----- Forwarded by Uma Umamaheswaran/Toronto/IBM on 18/08/2005 12:42 -----
                                                                           
             Sandy                                                         
             Gao/Toronto/IBM                                               
                                                                           
             18/08/2005 10:26                                              
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           



> This could be of interest to our XML schema folks ..

Schema (and XML Infoset) currently have no special treatment for xml:lang:
it's just a normal attribute and appear in the infoset in the same way as
other attributes.

This article suggests that "xml:lang" should be used to specify the
language in which the XML is written, while other language stuff should be
used as part of the value being transmitted.

If the world adopts this suggestion, then a bunch of things could/should
happen (to treat xml:lang specially, similar to the treatment to namespace
declarations):
- Special treatment for xml:lang in infoset (some special property?)
- Special validation rule for xml:lang in schema
- Special treatment in data binding specs (to ignore xml:lang)
- ...

I don't think any of these will happy easily. For schema, we've been
discussing treating all/some of xml: attribute specially. We are currently
leaning towards not to do that.

This article also mentions about "inheriting xml:lang", which is somewhat
misleading. The XML spec talks about that xml:lang's "intent is considered
to apply to the sub-tree". My reading of this is that xml:lang aware
processor can use such info to do useful things. But that doesn't imply
that xml:lang attribute is inherited by sub-elements in XML. The infoset
spec certainly has no mention of inheriting any xml:lang related infoset
property.

Thanks,
Sandy Gao
XML Parser Development, IBM Canada
(1-905) 413-3255
sandygao@ca.ibm.com

Received on Thursday, 18 August 2005 16:47:55 UTC