Re: [xliff-comment] Purpose of name attribute for <context-group>

["Asgeir Frimannsson" <asgeirf@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

>A) Each <context-group> element must have a unique name. You can't have two
>
><context-group> XML elements within the same <file> with the same 'name'
>attribute.
>
>The specification reads, "The optional name attribute may uniquely identify
>the <context-group> within the file." When referring to 'file', the
>reference is to the <file> element.
>
>Most of the uniqueness constraints mentioned in the specification must be
>unique within the <file> element.

The PO representation guide currently uses the same name for multiple
context-groups, this will need to be fixed in the following sections
to be consistent with the XLIFF 1.2 context-group "interpretation":
5.3. Translator Comments
5.4. Extracted Comments
5.5. References

In addition, the sample PO-XLIFF files will need to be updated to reflect this.

Also note that the XLIFF 1.1 Whitepaper make use of multiple
<context-group> elements with the same name in Section 6.1, I vaguely
remember that being the reason we used same-name groups in the PO
guide in the first place.

I agree with Jan-Arve, the XLIFF specification is not clear here, as
it can be interpreted both ways. I would like to ask for a
clarification of the following statement in the XLIFF specification:
"Because the <context-group> element may occur at a very high level, a
default context can be established for all  <trans-unit> elements
within a file. This default can be overridden at many subsequent
levels.". How does this overriding work, if not by matching on the
name attribute?

Going way back to an XLIFF 1.0 draft [1] - it seems that the original
intent of the 'name' attribute was to identify a set of
<context-group> elements. Specific sets of context-group elements
could be shown to the translator with the help of processing
instructions.

Is there are real practical reason for enforcing uniqueness of the
name attribute, or is this just a product of an earlier version of the
specification that hasn't been revised - and then later interpreted as
meaning unique?

It is also interesting to note that somewhere between XLIFF 1.1 and
1.2 the 'name' attribute of <context-group> was changed from required
to optional.

[1] http://xml.coverpages.org/xliff-draft-specification-3.html#named-group

Regards,
asgeir

--
Asgeir Frimannsson
PhD Candidate
School of Software Engineering and Data Communications
Queensland University of Technology
126 Margaret Street, Level 3
Brisbane QLD 4001, Australia

Phone: (+61) 7 3864 9332 Mob: (+61) 405 412 696
Email: a.frimannsson@qut.edu.au