- From: Lieske, Christian <christian.lieske@sap.com>
- Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 09:05:20 +0200
- To: <www-multimodal@w3.org>
- Cc: <public-i18n-its@w3.org>, <public-i18n-core@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <544FBEB6875DAA46A08323B58D26B801015FBC0C@dewdfe14.wdf.sap.corp>
Dear EMMA WG/editors, The W3C Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) WG has been looking at the EMMA WD ( <http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-emma-20070409/>) and has identified a relationship between EMMA and ITS. Accordingly, the ITS WG would like to ask the EMMA WG to consider the use of the W3C ITS Recommendation (see <http://www.w3.org/TR/its/>). In case you are not familiar with ITS: It defines a set of elements and attributes that provide "ready-to-go" internationalization and localization features. The ITS WG regrets that it was not possible to send these comments earlier. Note: The ITS WG is aware of the comments and replies from the Internationalization Core WG (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-core/2006JulSep/0075.html). Here are a specific observation and suggestion: - EMMA is meant to help to extend the Web user interface "to allow multiple modes of interaction (aural, visual and tactile), offering users the means to provide input using their voice or their hands via a key pad, keyboard, mouse, or stylus. For output, users will be able to listen to spoken prompts and audio, and to view information on graphical displays." Just looking at the input side of human computer interaction, the ITS WG assumes that EMMA should comprise means to represent features of languages and scripts such as directionality, Ruby annotations. - The EMMA WG may want to consider ITS in two ways i. Allowing ITS markup in EMMA. With this provision in place, EMMA could for example easily carry for example information on directionality, or ruby. Your example [emma:tokens="arriving at 'Liverpool Street'"] could for example be enhanced by local ITS markup (see http://www.w3.org/TR/its/#basic-concepts-selection-local) as follows in order to explicitly encode directionality information: [its:dir="ltr" emma:tokens="arriving at 'Liverpool Street'"]. Please note, that the EMMA design decision to encode tokens in an attribute prevents a decoration of individual tokens. With an elements-based encoding of tokens, the example [<tokens>arriving at 'Liverpool Street'</tokens>] furthermore could be enhanced by local ITS markup as follows in order to explicitly encode the fact that 'Liverpool Street' is a specific type of linguistic unit ('span' by the way is an element which ITS recommands): [<tokens>arriving at <span its:term="yes">Liverpool Street</span></tokens>"]. Aside: We have considered your response on tokens in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-i18n-core/2006JulSep/0074.html while crafting this suggestion. We felt, that ITS-annotations to tokens despite of your response would be valuable. ii. Creating an ITS Rule file (see http://www.w3.org/TR/its/#link-external-rules) along with the EMMA specification (e.g. as a non-normative appendix). With this in place, localization/translation would become easier in case EMMA instances or parts of EMMA instances (eg. an "interpretation") would need to be transfered from one natural language to another one. Several EMMA and elements and attributes contain text. Most, if not all localization tools (as well as ITS) assume element content is translatable and attribute content is not translatable. However in EMMA, this assumption does not seem to be valid. The EMMA element "interpretation" for example does not seem to contain immediate translatable content, and the EMMA attribute "tokens" in some circumstances might have to be translated. While this is fine because tools have ways to specify an element should not be translated, it is very often quite difficult no know *which elements* or *which attributes* should behave like that. Having a list of elements that are non-translatable (or conversely if there are more non-translatable than translatable elements) would help a lot. This list could be expressed using ITS rules (see http://www.w3.org/TR/its/#basic-concepts-selection-global) relating to "its:translate" (see "its:translate" see http://www.w3.org/TR/its/#trans-datacat). This way all user of translation tools (or other language-related applications such as machine-translation engines, etc.) could look up that set of rules and process accordingly. For the examples given above, and ITS rules file could be as simple as: <its:rules xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its" version="1.0"> <its:translateRule selector="//interpretation" translate="no"/> <its:translateRule selector="//@tokens" translate="yes"/> </its:rules> Christian Lieske MultiLingual Technology Solutions (MLT) SAP Language Services (SLS) SAP Globalization Services SAP AG Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16 D-69190 Walldorf Germany T +49 (62 27) 7 - 6 13 03 F +49 (62 27) 7 – 2 54 18 <blocked::mailto:christian.lieske@sap.com> christian.lieske@sap.com <blocked::http://www.sap.com/> http://www.sap.com Sitz der Gesellschaft/Registered Office: Walldorf, Germany Vorstand/SAP Executive Board: Henning Kagermann (Sprecher/CEO), Léo Apotheker (stellvertretender Sprecher/Deputy CEO), Werner Brandt, Claus Heinrich, Gerhard Oswald, Peter Zencke Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats/Chairperson of the SAP Supervisory Board: Hasso Plattner Registergericht/Commercial Register Mannheim No HRB 350269 Diese E-Mail kann Betriebs- oder Geschäftsgeheimnisse oder sonstige vertrauliche Informationen enthalten. 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Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 18:54:37 UTC