[OASIS Issue Tracker] (XLIFF-57) Unhelpful comments in the ITS module

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    [ https://issues.oasis-open.org/browse/XLIFF-57?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=66653#comment-66653 ] 

Yves Savourel commented on XLIFF-57:
------------------------------------

To summarize: Currently the warning says (with XYZ=the data category):

"This annotation can be syntactically in scope of a relevant its:annotatorsRef attribute, while it still fails to resolve with the intended value. This can happen if more than one XYZ providers were used."

First: It's not clear to me if the thing that does not resolve with the intended value is the annotation or the annotatorsRef attribute. For your explanation, it is the annotatorsRef value that can be wrong. Maybe this could be clearer by saying:

"This annotation can be syntactically in scope of a relevant its:annotatorsRef attribute, but the annotator reference value for XYZ be incorrect. This can happen if more than one XYZ providers were used."

Second: If each provider of the data category XYZ does its job according the ITS specification, this kind of incorrect value should not happen. It looks like you are expecting the annotator tools to not respect the specification. I think that is a bad idea. The specification should be written with the assumption that it is followed. Otherwise we should have warning like this everywhere: Any value may be wrong if the previous tool did not do its job properly.

Third: We still don't have a concrete example, and I can see why: an example of a bad annotatorsRef is indistinguishably from an example of a good annotatorsRef here. As you very rightly noted, "... no one else but the creator of the annotation can tell if the annotatorsRef resolves with the intended value". So the warning is basically saying: "The value may or may not be wrong depending on how bad or good was the annotator tool, but there is no real way to know anyway."
My take on this, as a developer, is since we cannot know if things are wrong, we might as well assume they are OK. After all, if someone has produced an XLIFF+ITS document I should assume they have followed the specification.

In a few words: I'd prefer to see those warnings deleted because a) they are not actionable, and b) they have only the effect of putting Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in the mind of the users.


> Unhelpful comments in the ITS module
> ------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: XLIFF-57
>                 URL: https://issues.oasis-open.org/browse/XLIFF-57
>             Project: OASIS XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF) TC
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: ITS Module
>    Affects Versions: 2.1_csprd04
>         Environment: http://markmail.org/thread/e5uzazha44zfxm6f
>            Reporter: Yves Savourel
>            Assignee: Tom Comerford
>            Priority: Minor
>              Labels: editorial, request_tc_discussion, work_required
>             Fix For: 2.1_cs01
>
>
> In
> http://docs.oasis-open.org/xliff/xliff-core/v2.1/csprd04/xliff-core-v2.1-csprd04.html
> there are 3 warnings starting with "This
> annotation can be syntactically in scope of a relevant."
> I believe the wording is confusing and does not really help the implementers and
> removing the text would improve the specification.
> As noted here in
> https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xliff/201705/msg00170.html this was issue
> https://issues.oasis-open.org/browse/XLIFF-53 that was closed temporarily to
> move forward.



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