Hi Fredrik,
> Does anyone know of an overview/evaluation of tools
> supporting XLIFF including the level of support?
As for info on XLIFF tools: there is a good list of tools and features put together by Micah Bly for the XLIFF Symposium, here:
http://www.localisation.ie/xliff/resources/presentations/xliff_tools_matrix_20100922.numbers.pdf
> For instance, it is my understanding that a <ph> element
> contains not translatable content, and consequently one
> would expect tools that claim support for XLIFF to protect
> such elements automatically (to prevent editing).
That's correct.
> However, all the tools I’ve looked at so far (as far as I
> can tell), do not protect the content (some seem to support
> post-edit verification of matching tags).
I guess you are not looking at tool with proper XLIFF support, or XLIFF support at all.
Quite a few of the main commercial tools do support this correctly: Trados TagEditor has a DTD Settings for XLIFF that does properly set all you need to edit XLIFF, as long as you have the source text copied in <target>. Trados Studio support <ph> well too. Swordfish has no problem with <ph> tags. MemoQ is also fine with <ph> tags, etc.
Several open-source tools are also supporting properly XLIFF: OmegaT has no problem with <ph> tags for example. The only tools that does not support <ph> properly among the XLIFF tools I know is the Open Language Tool XLIFF editor.
> ...So, I’m wondering if I’ve misunderstood something completely.
> Or is it completely up to tools developers to interpret what
> “supporting XLIFF” means? If not, what is the prerequisite/
> mechanism for tools developers to claim “accredited”
> compliance with the standard?
There is no official "compliance test" for XLIFF tools.
But <ph> support is pretty basic stuff. I would be complaining loudly to the tool vendor if they say they support XLIFF and do not support <ph> elements.
Hope this helps.
-yves
