RE: [xliff] Re: XLIFF 1.1 Specification Working Draft 14 - RC5

["John Reid" <JREID@novell.com>]

Hi Doug, Yves, et al,

 

Doug Domeny wrote:

>Replace "These paired elements are related via their rid attributes" (occurs
>5 times) with:

>

>These paired elements are matched by setting their id attributes to the same
>value. For example, <bx id="34"/> ... <ex id="34"/>

I think we are imposing a method on the XLIFF filters and a format on the skeletons with this change. Suppose we have a file format with the following text:

 

{This is translatable text which is {/weight=+w1}bold, {/weight=+w3} italic and bold{/weight=-w1}, and italic.{/weight=-w3}}

 

Here the codes are allowed to overlap. I've used bold and italic for simplicity but this could be complicated with more complex codes. The filter assigns each code a separate id because without a lookup table of some sort the filter doesn't know that /weight=+w1 means 'bold'. It does recognize that weight=+w1 and weight=-w1 are paired. Also, the developer of the filter did not want to regenerate codes that could as easily be stored. Thus, the skeleton for this text may look as follows:

 

{#TU id=18#

  #CODE id=19#{/weight=-w1}

  #CODE id=20#{/weight=+w3}

  #CODE id=21#{/weight=-w1}

  #CODE id=22#{//weight=-w3}

}

 

The <trans-unit> appears as follows:

 

<trans-unit id = "18">

  <source>This is translatable text which is <bx id="19" rid="1"/>bold, <bx id="20" rid="2"/>italic and bold<ex id="21" rid="1"/>, and italic<ex id="22" rid="2"/>.

  </source>

</trans-unit>

 

Thus, the id attribute relates the codes in the skeleton to the inline elements in the XLIFF. The rid attribute relates the paired codes to each other.

 

If the id must match between the the paired codes, the skeleton wouldn't store the end codes and the postprocessor must generate those.

 

This is why I think that the paired codes, <bx/>+<ex/> and <bpt>+<ept>, should be related via the rid attribute. This gives the greatest freedom to the filter writers.

 

--john