RE: [xliff] Conformance clause proposal

["Rodolfo M. Raya" <rmraya@maxprograms.com>]

Hi Asgeir,

Suppose that tool ABC creates XLIFF files with custom extensions.  John Translator receives one of those files and translates using XYZ. When he delivers the translated file, the client says that it is invalid because ABC can't open it. Common case today.

The maker of XYZ could use the schemas from ABC to ensure compatibility. Validating the file could reduce the number of errors caused by misinterpreted custom elements. This will not solve all problems, but will help.

There are cases when we don't have a solution. For example, there is a tool in the market today that doesn't read its own XLIFF files as XML. It fails in these two cases:

1) if you change this:

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><xliff ....

to: 

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
      <xliff ....

that tool says that it is not valid XLIFF.

2) If XYZ changes the order of attributes in an element, the tool can't generate a translated document. It complains about an error in the file.


There is another tool that uses custom namespaces for moving attributes to different places. For example, it puts the status of a translation in <trans-unit> instead of <target> and puts the match quality value in <trans-unit> instead of <alt-trans>. If their custom schemas were public, third party tools would be able to set the attribute values.

Both tools produce valid XLIFF 1.2 files. 

We can't solve all interoperability problems, but we can try to reduce them. Making schemas public would help other tool vendors.

XLIFF is an open standard promoting open exchange. We should not allow secrets that damage XLIFF's openness for exchanging localization data. 

Regards,
Rodolfo
--
Rodolfo M. Raya   <rmraya@maxprograms.com>
Maxprograms      http://www.maxprograms.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Asgeir Frimannsson [mailto:asgeirf@redhat.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 8:28 PM
> To: Rodolfo M. Raya
> Cc: xliff@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [xliff] Conformance clause proposal
> 
> ----- "Rodolfo M. Raya" <rmraya@maxprograms.com> wrote:
> > a) The custom XML schemas required to validate the document are
> > publicly available.
> 
> I am sceptical to this. I don't see why we can't use LAX processing for many of
> these extensions. What is the use case for forcing implementers to publicly
> publish these schemas?
> 
> Off topic for 'conformance clause', but looking at the ODF specification [1] for
> inspiration, we should include something like the following to restrict the use
> of foreign schemas:
> 
> "Conforming extended producers should not use foreign elements and
> attributes for features defined in the OpenDocument specification."
> 
> [1] http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/part1/cd04/OpenDocument-v1.2-
> part1-cd04.html#a_21_Document_Processing
> 
> 
> cheers,
> asgeir