Re: [office] xml:lang settings. Confused.

["Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com>]

On 20/06/07, Michael Brauer <Michael.Brauer@sun.com> wrote:

> > Why can't the xml:lang be used throughout?
> > For clarity where does 'western' finish and (presumably ) Eastern start?
> > xml:lang is so much simpler.
>
> ODF has an style:script-type attribute that (optionally) provides hints
> where the script types start and end. It's defined in section 15.4.21.

My question related to the weak definition Michael.
Western and Eastern isn't precise for a specification.



> How to get this on the agenda for  1.2?
> >>
> >> I'd like to hear what the decision was to have this Western/CJK/CTL
> >> approach in ODF. To me it seems it originated in some behavior of that
> >> MS-Word text processor.
> >
> > Oh dear. That doesn't sound good.
>
> Well, to the best of my knowledge MS Word also has different attributes
> for Western, CJK and CTL text.

I do wish we could avoid making the same mistakes as Word.


>
> But the different attributes for the language, and also for other
> attributes like the font family, do exist for usability reasons.

Can we just discuss xml:lang please, fonts may be associated
but should be a seperable problem.


 If you
> write a mixed text, you probably don't want to assign the language to
> every piece of text that does not have the default language.

That doesn't make sense to me. From a visual perspective,
I can continue writing, say, my English, and use some subset of French,
and no one will know.
If I change to use Katakana then I'd hope the author would indicate the fact!

So yes, to be correct, I would want the author to assign a language
to the block of text in question.


In
> particular, since you in practice do not only have to assign the
> language, but in many situations also the font family, and sometimes
> even the font height and weight.

That makes sense, unless you have some very clever implementations.
I want a tool that can recognise the code points, match them with glyphsets
and find an appropriate font. Font size/weight is orthoganal to this aspect.


For that reason, ODF has different
> attribute sets for these attribute, so that the user can set them once
> in the style, and from than on does not have to care about them any longer.

Do you think that is satisfactory Michael? I don't.

Regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk