Re: Web Notifications I18N Review: [I18N-ISSUE-161, I18N-ISSUE-162]

Hi Doug,

Actually, I phrased this as a question to the web notification team: Do you think web notifications will always be sent by applications that already have negotiated a preferred language for the user ("negotiated" in a very wide sense: they have obtained the user's preferred language from the operating system, have looked at an Accept-Language header, have let the user choose a language, etc.)? Or can there be senders that just have no information at all about the user's preferred languages?

In the first case, limiting to one language is perfectly fine. In the second case, the sender should have the ability to offer more than just Chinese, and let the user agent (which presumably knows more about the user's preferences) choose.

Documents can very well contain text in multiple languages and directions. For the direction, you have the default "auto", which will in most cases detect the direction correctly. Language detection unfortunately is quite unreliable for short strings, so there's no equivalent "auto".

Norbert


On Jun 27, 2012, at 18:44 , Doug Turner wrote:

> Hi Addison,
> 
> Maybe we are saying the same thing.  I think, where possible, the bidi attributes should be implemented.  Maybe calling them a hint is somehow i18n derogatory :)
> 
>> One other note, which Norbert raised in our conference call today but didn't make it into our earlier comments, was that it should also be possible to have within a notification multiple title or body items with separate language tags, since the sending system cannot always know the receiving systems' preferred language. Offering a choice in the notification would enable a "poor man's" language negotiation to occur. This is, obviously, not the primary use case, but not an impossible one.
> 
> I really don't like the idea of further extending this API.  I can imagine having some site having to list dozens language in this API - and that is just awful.
> 
> Does it make any sense to use the document's language and direction instead of specifying them in this API?  This would make the API simpler to use.
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Addison Phillips" <addison@lab126.com>
> To: "Doug Turner" <dougt@mozilla.com>
> Cc: www-international@w3.org, public-web-notification@w3.org, "Olli.Pettay" <opettay@mozilla.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 2:58:49 AM
> Subject: RE: Web Notifications I18N Review: [I18N-ISSUE-161, I18N-ISSUE-162]
> 
> Hi Doug,
> 
> (personal comments)
> 
> Support or the lack thereof for base direction or language specific formatting/processing isn't really a "hint" and I don't think it would be a good idea to reduce the implementation attention given to either by calling them that. Web Notifications goes out of its way not to define the appearance, display, or handling of the data structures it defines. In some cases, implementers might work around a native system's lack of bidi APIs in various ways (such as inserting Unicode bidirectional controls). In other cases this might not be effective or possible.
> 
> Still, if I send a notification with a dir="rtl", I pretty much do *depend* on the receiving system processing that in order for my notification to display correctly in all cases. Lack of support is, of course, a natural consequence of legacy systems. But it would be better to put the pressure on system vendors to do the right things than require people to type in their messages in odd ways or embed further bidi controls in content because the direction is "only a hint".
> 
> Setting the natural language of text, by contrast, is, in fact, a hint (although a useful one for systems that care), rather than a specific processing instruction. There are many *potential* effects from setting the language, but none would be appear to me to be appropriate for you to define in WN.
> 
> One other note, which Norbert raised in our conference call today but didn't make it into our earlier comments, was that it should also be possible to have within a notification multiple title or body items with separate language tags, since the sending system cannot always know the receiving systems' preferred language. Offering a choice in the notification would enable a "poor man's" language negotiation to occur. This is, obviously, not the primary use case, but not an impossible one.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Addison
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Doug Turner [mailto:dougt@mozilla.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 5:37 PM
>> To: Phillips, Addison
>> Cc: www-international@w3.org; public-web-notification@w3.org; Olli.Pettay
>> Subject: Re: Web Notifications I18N Review: [I18N-ISSUE-161, I18N-ISSUE-162]
>> 
>> This brings up a good point that I wanted to share with the group.  A few
>> months ago, I audited the many native notification system.  Most of these
>> systems do not have any concept of RTL/LTR.  Lets make sure we express this
>> fact in the spec by calling out that NotificationDirection is only a hint.  I would
>> hate to have web developers depend on this working on systems that clearly
>> can't support it.
>> 
>> As for language of their user-visible text - The same is going to be true.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Doug Turner
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Addison Phillips" <addison@lab126.com>
>> To: public-web-notification@w3.org
>> Cc: www-international@w3.org
>> Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 2:16:54 AM
>> Subject: Web Notifications I18N Review: [I18N-ISSUE-161, I18N-ISSUE-162]
>> 
>> Hello, Web Notifications,
>> 
>> The Internationalization Core WG has actioned me [1] with relaying our review
>> comments of your document:
>> 
>>   http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/notifications/raw-file/tip/Overview.html
>> 
>> Dated: 2012-06-27
>> 
>> We are tracking these items as I18N-ISSUE-161 and I18N-ISSUE-162 in Tracker
>> [2].
>> 
>> Our comments are:
>> 
>> 161: Notifications have no way to identify the language of their user-visible text
>> (title and body). Knowledge about the language is often necessary for the user
>> agent to select the right font or to pronounce the text correctly - see
>> http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-why
>> 
>> [there are similar comments from other WG members]
>> 
>> 162: (Section 5) It's a little odd that title is converted to Unicode before setting
>> the direction, while body has its direction set first. Can those be made
>> consistent? [This is an editorial comment and minor]
>> 
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2012/06/27-i18n-minutes.html I18N-ACTION-134 [2]
>> http://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/161
>> http://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/162
>> 
>> Thanks and best regards (for I18N)
>> 
>> Addison
>> 
>> Addison Phillips
>> Globalization Architect (Lab126)
>> Chair (W3C I18N WG)
>> 
>> Internationalization is not a feature.
>> It is an architecture.
>> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 28 June 2012 06:16:06 UTC