[xliff] XLIFF 2.0 Core

[David Walters <waltersd@us.ibm.com>]

In all of this discussion about what should be in the Core, I would like to understand what the audience that the Core is intended for.

It is my understanding that XLIFF can be used in these situations:

1. A format that product development can create to provide translatable text to be translated.
2. A format that can be used within a tool set to manage the translation of the content.
3. A format that one tool set can export which would then be imported into another set of tools.

In my opinion, the Core could be different for each situation.

1. A development group is going to need the least XLIFF function.
All they want to do is extract the text from one file format (this could be a proprietary format) and create an XLIFF file containing that text in such a way that after translation, they can extract the text from the translated XLIFF file and insert it back into their unique file format. They have no need nor knowledge to define segmentation rules, provide alternate translations, etc. They are basically providing the <source> content and maybe some translation comments. If they have previous translation memory information, that would probably be in a TMX format and would be provided as a separate file.

2. A set of tools.
If XLIFF is going to be used within a closed set of tools and never will be used outside of those tools, then that application can use as much of or as little of XLIFF functions as they want. If they received XLIFF files for a translation project (like from a development group, item 1 above), would they expect that XLIFF file to contain segmentation rules, alternate translations, etc.? Or is that information they would add within the translation tools they use?

3. Used between 2 separate sets of tools.
This is probably an area where there is the most variation, because each tool uses their own subset of the XLIFF functions. Is this the area where most of the comments about creating a Core came from?

Thanks for your comments.

David

Corporate Globalization Tool Development
EMail:  waltersd@us.ibm.com           
Phone: (507) 253-7278,   T/L:553-7278,   Fax: (507) 253-1721

CHKPII:                    http://w3-03.ibm.com/globalization/page/2011
TM file formats:     http://w3-03.ibm.com/globalization/page/2083
TM markups:         http://w3-03.ibm.com/globalization/page/2071