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Test 1 : Localisable Text in Attributes

Sample xml file describing a menu

Marked up with xlf Localisation Directives

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<window id="greeting-window" title="Greetings">
       <menubar id="main-menubar">
             
             <menu id="fileMenu" value="File" accesskey="f">
                    <menupopup>
                           <menuitem id="fileOpen" value="Open" accesskey="o" oncommand="Open()"/>
                           <menuitem value="Close" accesskey="c" oncommand="Close()"/>
                    </menupopup>
             </menu>
             
             <menu id="editMenu" value="Edit" accesskey="e">
                    <menupopup>
                           <menuitem value="Undo" accesskey="z" type="CTRL" oncommand="Undo()"/>
                           <menuitem value="Redo" accesskey="F4" type="VIRTKEY" oncommand="Redo()"/>
                    </menupopup>
             </menu>
       </menubar>
</window>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<window id="greeting-window" title="Greetings"
xmlns:xlf="http://www.open-oasis.org/xliff/1.1">
       <menubar id="main-menubar"
         xlf:path="/menu/menupopup/menuitem/@value ;
         /menu/menupopup/menuitem/@accesskey"
         xlf:localise="yes">

<menu id="fileMenu" value="File" accesskey="f">
             
                    <menupopup>
                           <menuitem value="Open" accesskey="o" oncommand="Open()"/>
                           <menuitem value="Close" accesskey="c" oncommand="Close()"/>
                    </menupopup>
             </menu>
             
             <menu id="editMenu" value="Edit" accesskey="e">
                    <menupopup>
                           <menuitem value="Undo" accesskey="z" type="CTRL" oncommand="Undo()"/>
                           <menuitem xlf:path="@accesskey" xlf:localise="no" value="Redo" accesskey="F4" type="VIRTKEY" oncommand="Redo()"/>
                                 
                    </menupopup>
             </menu>
       </menubar>
</window>

Comments

Difficutlt to identify which items are for localisation
To mark every attribute individually here would be wasteful. I think there is no point in trying that, the user may as well convert to xliff proper.

If we have a way of globally specifying which attributes are for localisation, this could be really powerful. An application like Catlayst could very easily go through this and pick out the items for localisation.

Perhaps an XPath type syntax would help (as in sample)
While it may be easy enough for us to specify the simple cases as above, this could get quite complicated for the processing application.

Need to be able to specify which attributes are to be localised
Need to be able to specify exceptions eg. Localise all accesskeys except the one in Redo

Even in the above example, you have problems...

xlf:path and xlf:localise must appear together, can this be validated?
xlf:path looks like a global variable that is set once, this is not the case, it is simply an instruction (Processer must interpret instruction to )
In a global setting mechanism like this, we can't assign an ID per translation unit

An alternative might be to create an element which would try to globally describe what has to be localised, eg.

<xlf:localise>
<xlf:path="/menu/menupopup/menuitem/@value" />
<xlf:path="/menu/menupopup/menuitem/@accesskey" />
</xlf:localise>