Re: [docbook-apps] gentext: difference between uppper and lower case?

["Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>]

Hi Paul,

Over time, the distinction between upper and lower case key names for gentext elements has gotten muddled.  The original design (from DSSSL days) allowed for both a lower case and an initial cap version of each text entry, based on the capitalization of the first letter of the key name.  I think the idea was to use the uppercase version in formal titles and lowercase elsewhere.

 

But the DSSSL stylesheets themselves never actually used the lowercase versions.  Most gentext lookups are based on the element name, so to get the uppercase version, it would have to first change the first letter of the element name used as a key to uppercase to access the text for a title.   At some time before the DSSSL stylesheets were ported to XSL, the lowercase text strings for English were all converted to uppercase.  From then on, using the "chapter" key would yield "Chapter", not "chapter".  This change dates back to at least 2001.

 

But not all locales got that treatment, so some still make the distinction, and even worse, some were half-way converted.  If you look at common/fr.xml, for example, you see inconsistent use of capitalization in l:gentext elements.

 

Fortunately, the stylesheets still work for most locales because they do not use the <l:gentext> elements much.  Most generated text is used in titles and xrefs, and those are handled by the <l:context> sections of the locale files, not the <l:gentext> elements.  Those context sections have only lowercase key names (to match the element name) and use the correct capitalization for the generated text.

 

If you are only customizing the 'local.l10n' parameter to alter generated text, you only need to supply the lowercase key names, because the stylesheet does not make use of the uppercase key names (unless your customization does).

 

But if your customization layer uses the template named "gentext" from common/l10n.xsl to access the l:gentext elements using a lowercase element name as a key, you may get the lowercase text result in some locales ("chapter" in fr.xml, for example).  If you uppercase the first letter in the key name, you should always get the uppercase text for all locales.  If you need a lowercase text string, then that is no longer possible across all locales.

 

Fixing all the locale files to use uppercase in both l:gentext text strings is a big job, as no one is familiar with all 74 languages. 

 

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Paul Tremblay

To: DocBook Apps

Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 7:33 AM

Subject: [docbook-apps] gentext: difference between uppper and lower case?

The customization of titles for the docbook xsl stylesheets requires that one use a key attribute for the following template:
   
<l:i18n xmlns:l="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/xmlns/l10n/1.0">
      <l:l10n language="en">
          <l:gentext key="glossary" text="Glossary Title"/>
      </l:l10n>
    </l:i18n>

However, it is not clear when one should use the upper case for the key, and one should use the lower case. The en.xml file as entries for both. In other words, why not use "Glossary" here (except the obvious that it won't work!).

An online search indicates that the mixture of lower and upper case results because of code from the DSSL that has been kept.

Thanks

Paul