RE: [dita] Proposed changes to the xml:lang proposal

Paul and Gershon,
I believe that this clarification is really intended to explain to readers of the specification why we advocate using xml:lang. We have more than one audience for the specification. We still have too little in terms of explaining the purpose of the elements and attributes to the user community.

JoAnn

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Prescod [mailto:] 
Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 11:02 AM
To: ; 
Subject: RE: [dita] Proposed changes to the xml:lang proposal

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gershon L Joseph [mailto:] 
> Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006 8:08 AM
> To: 
> Subject: [dita] Proposed changes to the xml:lang proposal
> 
>...
> 
> 2. "When reading XML markup that embeds scripts of different 
> languages, the embedded languages should be indicated via 
> markup when the document is saved." This sentence is still 
> confusing, and should be rewritten as
> follows:
> "When an application writes (saves) a document that contains 
> strings of characters from different languages, the strings 
> of each language should be indicated via markup."
> Thanks Paul G for pointing this one out. I changed your 
> suggested text a little.

I would rather remove this sentence altogether. I still don't think it defines any behaviour that programmers could implement.

What should a tool do if it is confronted with the following data.

<p>What should a tool do it if it is confronted with the following data:

<q>La division de l谷gislation compar谷e a rendu publique l'谷tude n∼ 160 sur l'acc豕s des 谷trangers en situation irr谷guli豕re au syst豕me de sant谷</q>

</p>
<p>Or the following data:

<q>市奈玄卞玉仿永弘仄化袚</q>

</p>

From a Unicode perspective, multiple languages can use the same script. So there is not enough information to infer languages. There is nothing useful a tool can do.

 Paul Prescod