RE: [xliff] XLIFF and XForms addendum

["Yves Savourel" <ysavourel@translate.com>]

Thanks for the additional input Andrzej.

> In all of the extensive XForms examples that I have sifted 
> through I have not come across anything that would approximate 
> to the use of attributes as translatable text in any form. 
> That is not to say that this could occur. Most attributes in 
> XForms are designed for use as XPath and XSDSchema control and 
> action settings or as reference variables. If anyone else could 
> throw more light on this I would be grateful.

It seems that maybe the attribute value of <setValue> could be translatable
depending on what the element is used for.

Hopefully the Xform WG will have some answers for us.


It's interesting to see the approach Micah Dubinko uses (I believe he is the
editor of the specification too).

I'm not sure if I would completely agree. Externalizing strings is good in
many cases, but when dealing with a structured content like XML, I'm not
sure it's all that useful: we loose some of the context. I guess the idea is
to allow one XFrom to call a different string set depending on the language
settings. If there is not re-arrangement of the form's controls to do, it's
ok. But, I guess, if one has one form file per language for any reason,
using an external document for the text would probably become an overkill.

And in any case, if one decides to use an external file to store the
strings, I would think a more simple format could be used.

> <strings>
>  <msg.top>Please complete the following questions</msg.top>
>  <label.term>Search:</label.term>
>  <label.where>Search the following locations on this web
site:</label.where>
>  <label.where.item1>Product information</label.where.item1> 

Having an infinite set of element names doesn't seem to be a very good idea
for some tools where you have to define what element to translate v.s. the
ones that should be protected. If such tool has is no way to set a default
settings, the user will have to update the settings file each time the
string set is modified. A probably better format would be:

<strings>
 <string id='msg.top'>Please complete the following questions</string>
 <string id='label.term'>Search:</string>
 <string id='label.where'>Search the following locations on this web
site:</string>
 <string id='label.where.item1'>Product information</string> 


Reardless, It's nice too see that people actually think about localization
now :)

Cheers,
-yves