FINAL XLIFF TC Revised Charter

[Tony Jewtushenko <Tony.Jewtushenko@oracle.com>]

Folks: this is the final charter - please reply with any final 
corrections or revisions before close of business tomorrow (Wednesday,  
19 Jan),  when a ballot will be submitted to the TC.

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XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF)

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of the OASIS XLIFF TC is to define, through XML 
vocabularies, and promote the adoption of, an extensible specification 
for the interchange of localization information. To date, the committee 
has published two specifications - XLIFF 1.0 and XLIFF 1.1 - that define 
how to mark up and capture localisable data that will interoperate with 
different processes or phases without loss of information. The 
vocabularies are tool-neutral, support the localization-related aspects 
of internationalization and the entire localization process. The 
vocabularies support common software and content data formats. The 
specifications provide an extensibility mechanism to allow the 
development of tools compatible with an implementer's data formats and 
workflow requirements.

The state of software and documentation localisation before XLIFF was 
that a software or documentation provider delivered their localisable 
resources to a localisation service provider in a number of disparate 
file formats. Once software providers and technical communicators 
commenced implementing XLIFF, the task of interchanging localisation 
data was simplified. Using proprietary and/or nonstandard resource 
formats force either the source provider or the localisation service 
provider to implement costly and inefficient pre-processing of 
localisable content. For publishers with many proprietary or 
non-standard formats, this requirement becomes a major hurdle when 
attempting to localise their software. For software developers and 
technical communicators employing enterprise localisation tools and 
processes, XLIFF defines a standard but extensible vocabulary that 
captures relevant metadata for any point in the lifecycle which can be 
exchanged between a variety of commercial and open-source tools.

The first phase, now completed, created a committee specification that 
concentrated on software UI resource file localisable data requirements. 
The next phase consists of promoting the adoption of XLIFF throughout 
the industry through additional collateral and specifications, 
continuing to advance the committee specification towards an official 
OASIS standard, contributing to the development of a standard 
localisation directives tag library and consuming it when available, and 
defining and publishing an implementation guide for document based 
content that addresses segmentation and alignment requirements. To 
encourage adoption of XLIFF, the TC will define and publish 
implementation guides for the most commonly used resource formats (HTML, 
RTF, Window Resources, Java Resource Bundles, and gettext PO Files), and 
will include reference implementations of XLIFF 1.1.

XLIFF TC work and deliverables adhere to OASIS IPR policy.

List of Deliverables

XLIFF 1.1 XHTML/HTML Representation Guide - June 21, 2005
XLIFF 1.1 RTF Representation Guide - June 21, 2005
XLIFF 1.1 Java Resource Bundle Representation Guide - June 21, 2005
XLIFF 1.1 Windows Resources Representation Guide - June 21, 2005
XLIFF 1.1 PO File Representation Guide - June 21, 2005
XLIFF 1.1 XML Representation guide - June 21,  2005
XLIFF 1.1 Document-based Content Implementation Guide (Includes 
Segmentation & Alignment) - June 21,  2005
Submit XLIFF 1.1 for consideration as OASIS Standard - June 21, 2005

In addition, the XLIFF TC will endeavour to deliver the following as
time and resources permit:

XLIFF 1.1 Reference Implementation (as Open Source and probably in 
collaboration with Trans-WS OASIS TC)
XLIFF 1.1 ResX Representation Guide
Review and input to development of Standard Localisation Directives Tag 
Library
XLIFF 1.1: Consume / Implement Standard Localisation Directives Tag Library


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-- 
Tony Jewtushenko				
Principal Product Manager - Oracle Application Development Tools
Oracle Corporation, Ireland

mailto:tony.jewtushenko@oracle.com
Direct tel: +353.1.8039080