Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Multi-language documentation

[Yann Dirson <ydirson@alcove.fr>]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2001 at 08:12:32AM -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
> / Yann Dirson <ydirson@alcove.fr> was heard to say:
> | > isn't set up to filter out only the lang="..." attributes of a specified 
> | > language.
> | 
> | DocBook's "lang" attribute does not have this meaning of alternative
> | text.  It's here to allow you to quote things in foreign languages I
> | think.
> 
> The lang attribute identifies the language of the text contained in the
> element on which it appears. If you have more the one language in a
> single document, it can be used for either purpose.

It's not sufficient in all cases - see below.

> I would use <foreignphrase> to identify a small piece of multi-lingual
> text that was supposed to be quoted in a document.

But OTOH, if you have eg. an english paper published in a french
scientific paper, you'll have both a french and an english summary for
the english text, for the reader's convenience.  This shall probably
be handled in DocBook with the "lang" attribute, and this will
preclude the use of "lang" to distinguish between, say, the english
version of the article and a german translation in the same file.

-- 
Yann Dirson <Yann.Dirson@fr.alcove.com>                 http://www.alcove.com/
Free-Software Engineer				      Ingénieur Logiciel-Libre
Free-Software time manager    	       Responsable du temps Informatique-Libre