[xliff] XLIFF 1.0 issues

[Mark Levins <mark_levins@ie.ibm.com>]

Hi All,

Here's a few issues I've found with the XLIFF 1.0 specification to date:

1. <note> as a child of <count>
Currently the <count> element is very ambiguous, a note as a child element could be used to indicate what was being counted, what was considered a word etc.

2. The <count-group>, <prop-group> and <context-group> elements can be used within a <group> without any other relevant child elements
The 1.0 specification allows that a <group> element can contain (for example) a <count-group> without containing anything to count. I think the <group> element should be changed to contain at least one of <group>, <trans-unit> or <bin-unit>.

3. Binary elements & <internal-file>
This is kind of a big one. At the moment the specification does not define the form of the content of the <internal-file> element (although there is an optional 'form' attribute). The problem is see with this is that the specification allows users place binary data directly as content - this binary content may contain the reserved XML characters < > etc which will cause parsers to choke.
The CDATA section approach is also not good enough to provide a solution.
My suggestion is that the content of the <internal-file> be restricted to Base64 or at least stated so.
Also, the description in the spec for the <internal-file> element reads "The <internal-file> element will contain the data for the skeleton file." which is technically wrong, it may also contain data for an <bin-source> or <bin-target> element.

4. mime-type attribute of <bin-source>
How come this attribute is omitted from the <bin-source> element? Note that it is an attribute of <bin-target>

Regards,
Mark