[xliff-comment] Embedding XLIFF in XHTML

[Doug <doug@ektron.com>]

Having not come up with a good way to embed XLIFF tags in an XHTML skeleton
document, I created two custom tags, <text> and <block>. Both tags have a
required id attribute. To distinguish these tags from HTML tags, the
namespace prefix 'skl' is used, as in, <skl:text
id="cancelCaption">Cancel</skl:text>.

The <skl:text> tag holds text to be translated that is used in the XHTML
skeleton document in one or more places. Often the text is used within
attribute values. When used elsewhere in the skeleton document, the text id
appears as an XSLT variable. For example,

	<input type="button" value="{$cancelCaption}" onclick="self.close()" />

The <skl:block> tag encloses a section of XHTML to be translated. The
section may include any HTML tags, like P, IMG, STRONG, etc. For example,

	<skl:block id="heading">
	<h2 align="center">
	eWebEditPro <br />Automatic <br />Download and Installation
	</h2>
	</skl:block>

An XSLT is used to extract the content within the <skl:text> and <skl:block>
tags to create an XLIFF document to provide to the translator.

Another XSLT is used to merge the skeleton XHTML document and the translated
XLIFF document to produce the localized XHTML document.

I suppose that the <xlf:source> tag could be used for <skl:block>, but since
none of the other XLIFF tags are present and the skeleton file is not really
an XLIFF document, that it would be better to have different tag names.


Any comments on this approach?


Regards,

Doug D

Ektron, Inc.
+1 603 594-0249
http://www.ektron.com