Re: [docbook] Re: [docbook-comment] internationalisation after 17years

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Norman Walsh wrote:
> [ Forwarding to the docbook@lists.oasis-open.org list because that's
>   were actual technical discussion takes place. (Not your fault, Michiel.) ]
> 
> / Michiel Kamermans <mkamerma@science.uva.nl> was heard to say:
> | Docbook has been around for 17 years, and it's *still* not properly
> | internationalised. I've been waiting for the DocBook 5 specification
> | in the hopes it would follow the W3C ruby annotation used in CJK
> | languages but useful outside this context too, only to see that as of
> | the most recent v5 specification there is still no such thing
> | available in DocBook, making it impossible to write textbooks in
> | English about Chinese or Japanese, or write full texts in these
> | languages for all audiences.
> 
> Thank you for this comment. I'm sorry that we weren't made aware of
> this deficiency earlier. I consider proper internationalization a
> critical requirement for DocBook markup.

Actually, there is customized version of DocBook that is properly 
internationalized, see

http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-i18n-bp/#docbook

This customization adds few new attributes and elements from ITS 
namespace to improve i18n/l10n support in DocBook vocabulary. Ruby 
markup is one of added elements.

I can imagine that future version of DocBook might directly include ITS 
markup or even introduce Ruby elements directly in DocBook namespace.

And, Michiel, please note that DocBook evolution is driven by 
requirements of DocBook users. So if you want to be sure that there is 
support for marking-up particular structure, please use the following 
page to submit new requirements:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384107&group_id=21935&func=browse

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