RE: [dita] Proposed changes to the xml:lang proposal

["Grosso, Paul" <pgrosso@ptc.com>]

I think this rewrite is misleading (unless, of course,

it's my understanding of what we are trying to say that

is mistaken).

 

Though I'm no Unicode expert, my understanding is that

there are Unicode code points that can be embedded in

an XML document that can indicate direction changes.

Similarly, one can embed a string of Unicode characters

that represent, say, a phrase using Chinese ideographs.

These can be done without using an (explicit XML) markup. 

However, what we are trying to say here is not to do that,

but instead to use explicit XML markup to delineate the

strings from different languages.

 

True, one should be setting the xml:lang attribute appropriately

on the start tag of the markup that delineates each string,

but the point is more about delineating the string that (just)

using the xml:lang attribute.

 

That is why I think saying "the language...should be indicated

via markup" is misleading, because is the string itself (as

well as its language) that needs to be indicated via markup.

 

paul

 

p.s.  I do agree with PaulP too, though, that we need to

be clearer about the actor in this wording.  Are we making

a suggestion to authors or editing tools?  If the latter,

PaulP is right that we aren't being clear enough about what

we expect editor implementors to do here.

---

From: Rodolfo M. Raya [mailto:rmraya@heartsome.net]
Sent: Sunday, 2006 April 09 12:21
To: gershon@tech-tav.com
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [dita] Proposed changes to the xml:lang proposal

On Sun, 2006-04-09 at 18:08 +0300, Gershon L Joseph wrote:

Hi,

2. "When reading XML markup that embeds scripts of different languages, the
embedded languages should be indicated via markup when the document is
saved." This sentence is still confusing, and should be rewritten as
follows:
"When an application writes (saves) a document that contains strings of
characters from different languages, the strings of each language should be
indicated via markup."

I would rewrite the sentence as:

"When an application writes (saves) a document that contains strings of characters from different languages, the language of each string should be indicated via markup."