RE: [xliff] Binary Module

[David Walters <waltersd@us.ibm.com>]

Sorry I'm late to the binary discussion, but I have been on vacation for several weeks.

The idea of including lots of binary data in an XLIFF file seems to contradict the intent of the XLIFF standard.  XLIFF is supposed to be a simple, easy-to-process XML format.  I thought one of the user comments was that the current XLIFF 1.2 specification is too complex and that we were trying to simplify it in XLIFF 2.0.  The design of this binary module seems rather complex, relying on processing rules defined outside of the XLIFF specification.  The whole idea of XLIFF is to extract the text from whatever format it is defined in, and make it format independent in the XLIFF file.  The tools handling the file should not really care where the text came from.  Any unique information which must be passed along with the text would be contained in XLIFF attributes.  As soon as we allow extensive binary data in the file, it impacts the interoperability of XLIFF.

It also seems to be too late in the release cycle to be introducing significant new modules.  These discussions should be delayed until after XLIFF 2.0 is released, as they are taking time away from finalizing the XLIFF 2.0 specification.  Otherwise, 2.0 will be pushed out further (causing dissatified customers), or we'll end up with a specification which has not had enough time to thoroughly think through the ramifications of the proposals.


David

Corporate Globalization Tool Development
EMail:  waltersd@us.ibm.com          
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