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Subject: Re: Marked up and edited acronym proposal
Hi Gershon, Apologies, but I have been traveling over the weekend. I have corrected the Polish as requested. Unfortunately, the expansion of the sections will take a bit longer, as I need to think them through thoroughly. Best Regards, AZ Gershon L Joseph wrote: > Hi Andrzej, > > I have cleaned up the markup (and moved the Doctype to point to the OASIS spec). I also did technical and general editing. > > As agreed in the SC meeting this past Tuesday, I also changed the name of the 'abbreviate-form' attribute to 'abbreviated-form' (added the 'd'). > > Here is the marked up proposal. I noticed that the example using OASIS used the wrong expanded form. The last 'S' stands for Standards, not Systems. Andrzej, please could you fix the Polish expanded word in the XML, since I can't do that ;-) > > Please could you fix the error ASAP and send the proposal back to me. > > While we probably could submit the proposal as-is after your fix, I think we need to expand the following sections: > Rendition (I want to clarify the tasks processors are expected to do in this section, since most of that information is currently scattered over the proposal) > Technical Requirements (I refer to the above info, but should probably specify the exact changes herein) > New or Changed Specification Language (I told them to read the rest of the proposal, but would like to expand this out...) > > I will try to get to these 3 sections on Sunday so we can at least get this proposal to the DITA TC at the next meeting, for discussion the following week. > > Thanks, > Gershon > > Gershon L Joseph > Director of Technology and Single Sourcing > Tech-Tav Documentation Ltd. > Secretary, OASIS DITA Technical Committee > Secretary, OASIS DITA Translation Subcommittee > Member, OASIS DocBook Technical Committee > > +972-8-974-1569 (direct) > +972-57-314-1170 (mobile) > http://www.tech-tav.com > > > -- email - azydron@xml-intl.com smail - c/o Mr. A.Zydron PO Box 2167 Gerrards Cross Bucks SL9 8XF United Kingdom Mobile +(44) 7966 477 181 FAX +(44) 1753 480 465 www - http://www.xml-intl.com This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you may not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. Unless explicitly stated otherwise this message is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a solicitation or offer.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!--Arbortext, Inc., 1988-2007, v.4002--> <!DOCTYPE reference PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Reference//EN" "reference.dtd"> <?Pub Inc?> <reference id="IssueNumber12038"> <title>DITA Proposed Feature # 12038</title> <shortdesc>Add a new element based on an expansion of the extant DITA <codeph ><keyword></codeph> element to assist in the resolution and handling of abbreviated-form text such as acronyms, general abbreviations, and short forms in source and target text within DITA documents</shortdesc> <refbody> <section><title>Longer description</title> <p><term>Abbreviated forms</term>, such as acronyms, are ubiquitous in technical documentation. Although there are similarities between abbreviated forms and glossary terms from the localization and presentation points of view, abbreviated forms are a special case. Abbreviated forms need to be expanded in the first encounter within a printed document. In electronic published documents, abbreviated form expansions can also be made available in the form of a hyperlink or 'tool tip' mechanism. In addition, the abbreviated form expanded text should be available for automatic inclusion in glossary entries for the publication. This proposal relates to all types of abbreviations, such as acronyms, initialisms, apocope, clipping, elision, syncope, syllabic abbreviation, and portmanteau.</p ></section> <section><title>Statement of Requirement</title><p>Abbreviated forms and their translations require special handling:</p><ul> <li>Some abbreviated forms are never translated, especially those that are intended for a knowledgeable, technical audience, as well as those that refer to standardized international concepts, such as <term >XML</term>.</li> <li>Some abbreviated forms represent a brand name for which the original expanded form is no longer used or is secondary to the abbreviated forms.</li> <li>Abbreviated forms such as <term>xml</term>, <term>jpg</term>, and <term>html</term> are typically used in their original form, that is, they may be quoted in lower case, and they are not translated.</li> <li>Abbreviated forms that have equivalent expressions in other languages are typically translated. United Nations (UN) and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have equivalents in other languages besides English. For instance, the French translation of “UN” is “ONU”.</li> <li>Some abbreviated forms are translated for clarity and also referred to in their original untranslated form. For instance, <term>OASIS</term > may be translated so that readers understand its significance in their native language but the original acronym would be retained in the translation to facilitate electronic search.</li> <li>The first occurrence of an abbreviated form in the target language may require a different formulation than the first occurrence of an abbreviated form in the source language, depending on the target audience and the grammatical features of the target language.</li> </ul><p>If the first occurrence of an abbreviated form in English is followed by its full form in parentheses, the translated version may require the expanded form followed by the abbreviated form in parentheses. It might also be necessary to include the English and a translation.</p><p>For example, in a Polish book on Java Web programming, the first reference to JSP may appear as follows:</p><q>JSP (ang. Java Server Pages)</q><p>Another example from a publication concerning OASIS:</p><q>OASIS (ang. Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards—organizacja dla propagowania strukturalnych standardów infomracyjnych)</q><p>In the first example, the translator assumes the reader will not require a translation of the English abbreviated form. In the second example, the translator assumes the reader may not understand the English expanded form and therefore adds the translation.</p ></section> <section id="tech_prop"><title>Technical Proposal</title><p>The proposal is to create an element which would be a specialized form of the <codeph ><keyword></codeph> element. The abbreviated form resolution will be via the <codeph>conref</codeph> attribute to the abbreviated form's text for short, expanded and first forms. The abbreviated form element is designed to be extended via specialization to reflect the actual form of abbreviation, for example:</p><codeblock><acronym conref="acronyms.dita#acronyms/abs"/></codeblock ><p>The entry in the <filepath>acronyms.dita</filepath> file would be as follows:</p><codeblock><abbreviated-form id="abs"> <expanded>Anti-lock Braking System</expanded> <short>ABS</short> <surface-form>Anti-lock Braking System (ABS)</surface-form> </abbreviated-form></codeblock><note>The ID of the <codeph>abbreviated-form</codeph > element only needs to be unique to the file in which it is defined, and does not need to match the acronym, so translations of the above example will continue to use <codeph>id="abs"</codeph>.</note><p>The <codeph ><expanded></codeph> form will be a specialization of the <codeph ><keyword></codeph> element, while the <codeph><short></codeph > element will be a specialization of the <codeph><data></codeph > element. This means that the expanded term is a normal phrase, while the short form is metadata that is hidden when processes do not know what to do with it. Translation processes should treat this data specialization as a subflow element for the purposes of translation. The <codeph ><surface-form></codeph> element represents how the acronym should be displayed on the first occurrence of the acronym, or for hypertext display with the tool-tip rendition.</p><table> <tgroup cols="2"><colspec colname="col1"/><colspec colname="col2"/> <thead> <row> <entry valign="top">This new element…</entry> <entry valign="top">Is specialized from this base element…</entry> </row> </thead> <tbody> <row> <entry><codeph><abbreviated-form></codeph></entry> <entry><codeph><keyword></codeph></entry> </row> <row> <entry><codeph><expanded></codeph></entry> <entry><codeph><keyword></codeph></entry> </row> <row> <entry><codeph><short></codeph></entry> <entry><codeph><data></codeph></entry> </row> <row> <entry><codeph><surface-form></codeph></entry> <entry><codeph><keyword></codeph></entry> </row> </tbody> </tgroup> </table><p>The first time an abbreviated form is encountered, the processing tool should use the text in the <codeph><surface-form></codeph > element. Subsequent instances should be replaced by the contents of the <codeph><short></codeph> element. The <codeph><expanded></codeph > form is designed to be used in glossaries. These three elements therefore allow the full needs of acronym handling to be met:</p><ul> <li>First occurrence rendition</li> <li>Subsequent short form rendition</li> <li>Glossary entry</li> </ul><note>This proposal assumes that <codeph><keyword></codeph > can be nested inside <codeph><keyword></codeph>, which is not supported in DITA 1.1, but is a proposed feature of DITA 1.2 (see proposal #12020).</note> </section> <section><title>Translation Issues</title><p>The following cases must be contemplated when working with documents that require internationalization:</p ><ul> <li><p>If there is no short form for the target language, then the <codeph ><short></codeph> element will be empty to signify that no short form exists for this language. The <codeph><surface-form></codeph > must always contain the text that will be displayed for the first occurrence. Consider the following example in English:</p><codeblock ><abbreviated-form id="wmd"> <expanded>Weapons of Mass Destruction</expanded> <short>WMD</short> <surface-form>Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)</surface-form> </abbreviated-form></codeblock><p>In Spanish, this becomes:</p ><codeblock><abbreviated-form id="wmd" xml:lang="es"> <expanded>armas de destrucción masiva</expanded> <short/> <surface-form>armas de destrucción masiva</surface-form> </abbreviated-form></codeblock></li> <li><p>In some languages, like Spanish, abbreviated-form expansion should be written in lower case. This can lead to a grammatical error if the first appearance of an abbreviated form occurs at the beginning of a sentence. The same problem may arise with the indefinite article in English 'a' depending on whether the text to be inserted begins with a vowel. It is up to the composition/display software to handle this. For example, the acronym for AIDS should be translated as:</p ><codeblock><abbreviated-form id="aids" xml:lang="es"> <expanded>síndrome de inmuno-deficiencia adquirida</expanded> <short>SIDA</short> <surface-form>síndrome de inmuno-deficiencia adquirida (SIDA</surface-form> </abbreviated-form></codeblock><p>Normally the <codeph><surface-form></codeph > version of the abbreviated form in the above example could not be used at the start of a sentence, because it begins with a lower case letter. It is up to the composition software for the given language to cope with these requirements.</p></li> <li><p>Abbreviated forms can cause problems primarily for inflected languages because abbreviated form expansion needs to be presented in the nominative case, without any inflection. This can be achieved by placing the expansion of the abbreviated form in parentheses immediately following the acronym in the <codeph><expanded></codeph> element. For example, the Polish acronym for the European Union may be:</p ><codeblock><abbreviated-form id="eu" xml:lang="pl"> <expanded>Unia Europejska</expanded> <short>UE</short> <surface-form>UE (Unia Europejska)</surface-form> </abbreviated-form></codeblock><p>Using the above construct enables automated handling of the abbreviated form in Polish without causing any problems with grammatical inflection. For example, when stating that something occurred within the EU, the inflected form in Polish caused by the use of the locative case would have to be used. For the actual abbreviated form itself this is not a problem, since abbreviated forms are not inflected. Consider, for example, the phrase <q>In the European Union (EU) there are many institutions…</q>:</p><p>W Unii Europejskiej (UE) jest wiele instytucji…</p><p>However, by allowing the translator to control how the text is displayed via the <codeph ><surface-form></codeph> element, the first occurrence for the abbreviated form allows the translator to use the following acceptable construct:</p><p>W UE (Unia Europejska) jest wiele instytucji…</p ></li> </ul></section> <section><title>Rendition</title><p>Authors will enter the <codeph ><abbreviated-form></codeph> element for every occurrence of a given acronym.</p><p>At compose time, when putting together the publication, the publishing tool will print the <codeph><surface-form></codeph > element the first time. The ABS acronym used in previous examples would be rendered as:</p><q>The Anti-lock Brake System (ABS) system will prevent the car from skidding in adverse weather conditions.</q ><p>Subsequent instances will then be rendered as:</p><q>The ABS system will provide the driver with feedback via the brake pedal.</q></section> <section> <title>Technical Requirements</title><p>A new <codeph ><abbreviated-form></codeph> element needs to be created, which is a specialization of the <codeph><keyword></codeph> element. The content model of <codeph><abbreviated-form></codeph> was described above in <xref format="dita" href="#IssueNumber12038/tech_prop" scope="local" type="section"><?Pub _previewtext text="Technical Proposal" ?></xref>.</p></section> <section><title>New or Changed Specification Language</title><p>The language for the language and architectural specifications can be taken from the information in the above sections. That information is not repeated here to save the user from having to read it all twice.<?Pub Caret?></p></section> <section><title>Costs</title><p>We do not believe that the addition of the <codeph><abbreviated-form></codeph> elements as a specialization of <codeph><keyword></codeph>, and its child elements <codeph><expanded></codeph >, <codeph><short></codeph>, and <codeph><surface-form></codeph > involve significant work.</p></section> <section><title>Benefits</title><p>Abbreviated forms will be handled in a uniform and consistent manner. The handling of the abbreviated form will be under the control of the composition software. The first occurrence of the abbreviated form can show the <codeph><surface-form></codeph >. The text for both the source and target languages will be consistent as it will be resolved via the <codeph>conref</codeph> attribute from a single source. The resolution of the abbreviated form can be completely under the control of the composition software so that glossary, tooltip, and first forms can be provided as required to meet the end-user requirements.</p ></section> </refbody> </reference> <?Pub *0000013126 0?>
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