RE: Concerning Ethiopic and XML

Don,

Sorry to be slow to reply.  I did reply to Mr Cowan but not the list as
I'm not on board.  I'm reluctant to join, I'd be in over my head and this
could well be just a passing thread.

Here is what I replied to him:

===========

> names cannot.  The reference to "Amharic transcription" suggests
> that it is attribute names that are meant, since there would be no
> need for transcription (= romanization) of the values.

Yes for attribute names.  The values I transliterated (not transcribed)
if they were to be Amharic, etc.  The text between the markups would
be transliterated (also nested within transliteration system markups)
or UTF-8 if the XML document itself was the output of another processing
software.

I wasn't really conscious about why I was making these decisions at the 
time I did so.  It just seemed to be the natural flow of things.  Thinking
about it now I would definitely come to the same conclusions (of course
its too late, I'm jaded).  The terms involved however probably played
a role (conscious or not) as to why I chose to either translate or transcribe.

===========

> Daniel, could you elaborate on your usage of Amharic transcription for
> attribute names?

To add to it, I often do initial development work with amharic terms and
later revert to english depending on who will have to read the documents
later.  For personal work I might choose the term that is quickest to
type and not worry about the language so long as I won't forget what I
meant later.  I never made these decisions as part of a grandious design
schema, it was just a matter of convenience/laziness.

cheers,

/Daniel

Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2001 18:18:57 UTC