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Subject: Localization attributes in LwDITA


The localization attributes are universal in DITA 1.3, and are nearly (but not quite) universal in LwDITA. The following LwDITA elements can contain text or are container elements that might include text, so they should have the localization attributes:
* topicref
* keydef
* topicmeta
* data
* prolog
* audio (also needed to specify the language of the audio)
* video (also needed to specify the language of the video)

Basically - as we discovered in DITA 1.2 and 1.3 development, whenever there is a situation where a group of elements might have cause to set a common direction / language / @translate value, you're better off setting it directly on the group, rather than forcing somebody to set it on every element. That's why we made it truly universal, even adding it to the <dita> container that doesn't have its own DITA class attribute.

Apart from those, the following elements are the only other elements missing the localization attributes. They all come from the multimedia domain, and for some it's arguable whether those would ever be useful. At the same time, in terms of complexity ... my personal feeling is that it's both safer and less complex to have localization capabilities be universal than to have them on all except 4 elements.
* controls (to be fair ... I'm not sure where language could come in to play on this one)
* poster (could you have different posters for different geographies?)
* source (not sure if audio/video might have different sources by geography)
* track (might have different tracks for different languagues?)

Regards,

Robert D. Anderson
DITA-OT lead and Co-editor DITA 1.3 specification,
Digital Services Group


E-mail: robander@us.ibm.com
Digital Services Group
11501 BURNET RD,, TX, 78758-3400, AUSTIN, USA




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