Re: [office] Proposal for script attributes and language tags

[Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com>]

Hi,

On Saturday, 2007-01-27 22:33:20 +0100, Eike Rathke wrote:

> Add optional *:rfc-language-tag attributes to all places mentioned
> above. This attribute, when present, shall override the *:language
> *:script *:country attributes and is only to be written if the value
> could not be expressed as a valid combination of those.

To prevent misunderstanding in the sense that writing contradicting
fo:{language,script,country} vs. *:rfc-language-tag values would be
valid, I propose to change the wording and use "augment" instead of
override, so that phrase would read:

This attribute, when present, shall augment the *:language *:script
*:country attributes and is only to be written if the value could not be
expressed as a valid combination of those.

Additionally, to clarify that no contradicting information shall be
written, I propose to add to this

> If
> appropriate, for example in the case of a dialect to provide a fall-back
> for applications that don't support the *:rfc-language-tag attribute,
> applications should write language/script/country attributes that come
> as close as possible to the actual value of the rfc-language-tag
> attribute.

the following:

No information contradicting the *:rfc-language-tag attribute shall be
written to the language/script/country attributes.

The entire proposal now reads:

---%<---snip---%<---

Note: whenever I mention RFC 4646 in the following, the draft 4646bis
should be considered as a successor, planned to become effective as soon
as ISO/FDIS 639-3 will be accepted as a full ISO standard, see
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ltru-4646bis-02.txt
especially "8.  Changes from RFC 4646". In case a newer draft is
available see
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
"Tags for Identifying Languages".

To be able to support the full range of language/script/country
combinations I propose:

The description of *:language attributes shall not only refer
"7.9.2 language" of [XSL]
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xsl-20011015/slice7.html#language
but explicitly also allow ISO 639-3 three letter codes if no 639-1 or
639-2 codes are assigned for a particular language, which is not covered
by the language-specifier of RFC 3066 that is referred in [XSL] 7.9.2.

Add optional *:script attributes to all places where currently
*:language and *:country attributes are defined. The value of the
*:script attribute shall be according to
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xsl-20011015/slice7.html#script
the ISO 15924 four letter script code. The *:script attribute should be
written only if necessary according to the rules of RFC 4646 section
"2.2.3.  Script Subtag" paragraph 5.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4646#section-2.2.3

The script attribute's schema would be

<optional>
  <attribute name="fo:script">
    <ref name="scriptCode"/>
  </attribute>
</optional>

respectively table:script and number:script where appropriate. The
places affected are:

- "7.8.1 Alphabetical Index Source", the fo:language and fo:country of
  text-alphabetical-index-source-attrs

- "8.6.5 Sort", table:language and table:country of table-sort-attlist

- "14.7.2 Currency Style", number:language and number:country of
  number-currency-symbol-attlist

- "14.7.9 Common Data Style Attributes", number:language and
  number:country of common-data-style-attlist

- "14.9.3 Bibliography Configuration", fo:language and fo:country of
  text-bibliography-configuration-attlist

- "15.4.23 Language" fo:language and "15.4.24 Country" fo:country


Furthermore, to be able to support dialects and variants and extensions
that are not expressible with the combination of the three
language/script/country attributes, I propose:

Add optional *:rfc-language-tag attributes to all places mentioned
above.

The *:rfc-language-tag attribute, when present, shall augment the
*:language *:script *:country attributes and is only to be written if
the value could not be expressed as a valid combination of those. The
value shall be a string according to the rules of RFC 4646 (4646bis). If
appropriate, for example in the case of a dialect to provide a fall-back
for applications that don't support the *:rfc-language-tag attribute,
applications should write language/script/country attributes that come
as close as possible to the actual value of the rfc-language-tag
attribute. No information contradicting the *:rfc-language-tag attribute
shall be written to the language/script/country attributes.

The rfc-language-tag attribute's schema would be

<optional>
  <attribute name="fo:rfc-language-tag">
    <ref name="RFClanguageTag"/>
  </attribute>
</optional>

respectively table:rfc-language-tag and number:rfc-language-tag where
appropriate.


Furthermore, to be able to store the same values as the default document
language I propose:

Change

- "3.1.15 Language", the metadata <dc:language> element

to allow a language-tag according to RFC 4646 (4646bis). Effectively
this means to change the paragraph containing

| The manner in which the language is represented is similar to the
| language tag described in [RFC3066]. It consists of a two or three
| letter Language Code taken from the ISO 639 standard optionally followed
| by a hyphen (-) and a two-letter Country Code taken from the ISO 3166
| standard.

to

The manner in which the language is represented is a language tag as
described in [RFC4646 (4646bis)].

I suggest to not repeat the syntax of a RFC 4646 language tag in the
description.

---%<---snap---%<--- 


  Eike

-- 
 OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS