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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
>
>
>   


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<?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
>&lt;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
>&lt;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>&lt;acronym conref="acronyms.dita#acronyms/abs"/></codeblock
><p>The entry in the <filepath>acronyms.dita</filepath> file would
be as follows:</p><codeblock>&lt;abbreviated-form id="abs">
  &lt;expanded>Anti-lock Braking System&lt;/expanded>
  &lt;short>ABS&lt;/short>
  &lt;surface-form>Anti-lock Braking System (ABS)&lt;/surface-form>
&lt;/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
>&lt;expanded></codeph> form will be a specialization of the <codeph
>&lt;keyword></codeph> element, while the <codeph>&lt;short></codeph
> element will be a specialization of the <codeph>&lt;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
>&lt;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>&lt;abbreviated-form></codeph></entry>
<entry><codeph>&lt;keyword></codeph></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><codeph>&lt;expanded></codeph></entry>
<entry><codeph>&lt;keyword></codeph></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><codeph>&lt;short></codeph></entry>
<entry><codeph>&lt;data></codeph></entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><codeph>&lt;surface-form></codeph></entry>
<entry><codeph>&lt;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>&lt;surface-form></codeph
> element. Subsequent instances should be replaced by the contents
of the <codeph>&lt;short></codeph> element. The <codeph>&lt;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>&lt;keyword></codeph
> can be nested inside <codeph>&lt;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
>&lt;short></codeph> element will be empty to signify that no short
form exists for this language. The <codeph>&lt;surface-form></codeph
> must always contain the text that will be displayed for the first
occurrence. Consider the following example in English:</p><codeblock
>&lt;abbreviated-form id="wmd">
  &lt;expanded>Weapons of Mass Destruction&lt;/expanded>
  &lt;short>WMD&lt;/short>
  &lt;surface-form>Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)&lt;/surface-form>
&lt;/abbreviated-form></codeblock><p>In Spanish, this becomes:</p
><codeblock>&lt;abbreviated-form id="wmd" xml:lang="es">
  &lt;expanded>armas de destrucción masiva&lt;/expanded>
  &lt;short/>
  &lt;surface-form>armas de destrucción masiva&lt;/surface-form>
&lt;/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>&lt;abbreviated-form id="aids" xml:lang="es">
  &lt;expanded>síndrome de inmuno-deficiencia adquirida&lt;/expanded>
  &lt;short>SIDA&lt;/short>
  &lt;surface-form>síndrome de inmuno-deficiencia adquirida (SIDA&lt;/surface-form>
&lt;/abbreviated-form></codeblock><p>Normally the <codeph>&lt;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>&lt;expanded></codeph> element.
For example, the Polish acronym for the European Union may be:</p
><codeblock>&lt;abbreviated-form id="eu" xml:lang="pl">
  &lt;expanded>Unia Europejska&lt;/expanded>
  &lt;short>UE&lt;/short>
  &lt;surface-form>UE (Unia Europejska)&lt;/surface-form>
&lt;/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
>&lt;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
>&lt;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>&lt;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
>&lt;abbreviated-form></codeph> element needs to be created, which
is a specialization of the <codeph>&lt;keyword></codeph> element.
The content model of <codeph>&lt;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>&lt;abbreviated-form></codeph> elements as a specialization
of <codeph>&lt;keyword></codeph>, and its child elements <codeph>&lt;expanded></codeph
>, <codeph>&lt;short></codeph>, and <codeph>&lt;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>&lt;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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tel;work:+441494558106
tel;home:+441494532343
tel;cell:+447966477181
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