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Subject: Re: [dita] Cascading of xml:lang attribute


Hi Andrzej,

I agree. I was thinking of a phase before automation, where there may be a range of languages, and someone who knows only a few of them has to make a stab at guessing which language is which because the need for xml:lang is discovered rather late in the day. I suspect that your assertion about humans being inherently error prone and unreliable would be quickly confirmed. One hopes that the originator of each document will normally be in a much better position to correctly assign xml:lang attribute!
Regards,

Doug Morrison
Information Architect
http://dita4all.com

On 05/08/2010 09:57, Andrzej Zydron wrote:
4C5A7D16.3090100@xml-intl.com" type="cite"> Hi Doug,

In a proper production system this should be totally automated as part of the translation workflow. It should not reply on humans, who we know are inherently error prone and unreliable!

Best Regards,

AZ

On 05/08/2010 09:39, Doug Morrison wrote:
 In my opinion the answer should be "No" because it encourages bad practice. Let's say you create 200 or so files and rely on the setting of xml:lang in 10 or so maps. Then you need to usethe same files with different maps having a different setting for xml:lang. Now you discover that you have to add the xml:lang setting in hundreds of files. I would prefer to discover the bad practice after creating one or two files rather than 200.

Different users will prefer different defaults, so whatever choice is made, it will not suit everybody - but I think 'erring' on the side of encouraging good practice is the correct choice.

Regards,

Doug Morrison
Information Architect
http://dita4all.com


On 03/08/2010 23:07, Su-Laine Yeo wrote:
Hi Dave,

For teams which publish primarily in one language, setting a "good" default for the processor or putting xml:lang in the template is not a big burden. However, consider a team that publishes in a dozen locales. That team needs to set the locale parameter for the processor up to a dozen times and get it right each time. You can automate builds to avoid having to set parameters over and over, but many adopters do not have automated build processes, especially in the the early stages of adoption.

The question is whether processors should apply the xml:lang of the primary map *if that is the only place where xml:lang is defined*. Why should the answer be no? I'm aware that changing the xml:lang on a map or topic does not change the language of any other sub-topics or sub-maps. However I don’t see how that (obvious) fact is relevant to this question.

Cheers,
Su-Laine


-----Original Message-----
From: Helfinstine, David [mailto:dhelfinstine@ptc.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 1:33 PM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: Robert D Anderson; Su-Laine Yeo
Subject: RE: [dita] Cascading of xml:lang attribute

Greetings,

The xml:lang should be considered an attribute set in each document. There are other language type attributes like @dir and @translate that are also document attributes. They also do not cascade from map to map or map to topic or topic to sub topic, etc. These might be important when processing so it would not necessarily be xml:lang alone that would need to be considered. As has been mentioned, changing the xml:lang on a map or topic does not change the language of any other sub-topics or sub-maps.

The comments regarding setting the xml:lang in every document can be overcome by setting a good processor default. If the processor default in a French environment is “fr” then it might be reasonable that the processor default would be “fr” unless a different xml:lang is encountered in a map or topic. If however one of the French documents were put into a different language map then the processor default would probably be set to that language. The French author would have to remember to put the xml:lang=”fr” in the French topic to keep that from happening. Having the xml:lang=”fr” on the topic tag would alleviate the problem in the first place. For those users who use templates, it might be great to include in the template the xml:lang already set to a decent default value. That way – no worries!

Before the DITA 1.2 the cascading of attributes was not defined. There was talk of inheritance in DITA 1.1 and there was the one reference to xml:lang regarding topicref and the actual topic. But as a whole this topic was not defined rather than DITA 1.2 being a change to the way they behaved.

Thanks.

- Dave H.
  Dave Helfinstine
DHelfinstine@ptc.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 2:56 PM
To: Robert D Anderson
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [dita] Cascading of xml:lang attribute

Thanks Robert.

We've received some quite strongly-worded comments from DITA users that having to set xml:lang on every single topic file would be an enormous hassle. For the case of a mostly-French document that pulls in one English topic, it is reasonable to ask users to set xml:lang="fr" once on the map, and xml:lang="en" once on the English topic. However I don't see why we would also require users to set xml:lang="fr" on every French topic if they want those topics to be processed in French.

I see this as being a substantial change over the DITA 1.1 spec which adds work for users, and I can't see the practical benefit.

Su-Laine


-----Original Message-----
From: Robert D Anderson [mailto:robander@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 12:33 PM
To: Su-Laine Yeo
Cc: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [dita] Cascading of xml:lang attribute

Trying to remember the discussion of this - I believe that your reading of
the 1.2 spec is correct.

I think the idea was that the language is a property of the document itself
that travels with the document, and cannot be set or reset from above. For
example, if you have a map with all French topics, but then reference an
existing English topic somewhere else that does not set xml:lang, the fact
that you're referencing it from a French map does not make the topic
French. Following the spec's recommendation to ensure xml:lang is on the
root element of every document helps bypass this issue and any resulting
confusion.

Robert D Anderson
IBM Authoring Tools Development
Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit



              "Su-Laine Yeo"
<su-laine.yeo@jus
              tsystems.com>                                               To
<dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
              08/03/2010 03:11                                           cc
              PM
                                                                    Subject
                                        [dita] Cascading of xml:lang
                                        attribute










Hi everyone,


A bug report for the DITA Open Toolkit has raised some interesting
discussion:


https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=725074&aid=3038532&group_id=132728


Users need to know if they need to set the xml:lang attribute only in their
primary map, or for every topic. Developers of processors need to know if
processors should look at the map when deciding what locale to use when
displaying topics.


Say you have a<note>  element in a DITA topic that is referenced by a DITA
map. My reading of the DITA 1.1 spec is that language should be determined
as follows:


1) Get xml:lang from the<note>  element. If xml:lang is not defined there,
get it from the closest ancestor within the topic.


2) If xml:lang not defined in an ancestor of<note>  within the topic, get
it from the<topicref>  in the map.


3) If xml:lang not defined in the<topicref>, get it from closest ancestor
of the<topicref>  within the map.


4) If xml:lang is not defined in any ancestor of the<topicref>  within the
map, the processor should assume a default value.


However, the draft DITA 1.2 spec contains the sentence “The @xml:lang value
does not cascade from one map to another or from a map to a topic”, which
seems to imply that the language should be determined as follows:


1) Get xml:lang from the<note>  element. If xml:lang is not defined there,
get it from the closest ancestor within the topic.


2) If xml:lang not defined in an ancestor of<note>  within the topic, the
processor should assume a default value.


Is this the intention?


Su-Laine


Su-Laine Yeo
Solutions Consultant


JustSystems Canada, Inc.
Office: 778-327-6356
syeo@justsystems.com


www.justsystems.com


XMetaL Community Forums: http://forums.xmetal.com/





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