I'm not
comfortable with this for the reasons outlined below.
As I
understand it, <bx/> is a shortened way of writing <bpt></bpt>
and <ex/> is a shortened way of writing <ept></ept>. Quite why
we need these extra tags (saving six characters per occurrence) is a little
bit beyond me to start with. However, <bpt> and
<ept> are taken from the TMX format where there is an attribute, "i" which
links them together. This is a required attribute in these
tags.
In the specification, <bx> and <ex> as
described as "begin paired placeholder" and "end
paired placeholder" respectively. To me, this means
that each <bx/> must have a corresponding <ex> and
vice-versa. If this is the case then there must be a mandatory attribute that
links them together. However, under
John's proposal, we are suggesting that the <bx/> and <ex/> tags
should be linked via a non-mandatory attribute. We're are also suggesting
linking them together using an attribute which has a vague description and could
be used for a variety of purposes (including using it as a lookup device in the
skeleton file), some of which are references outside of the
<trans-unit>.
Either the
rid becomes
mandatory for <bx/>, <ex/>, <bpt> and <ept> (and its
wording is changed to reflect its new status) or we agree to use the
id attribute. With John's example, it's still possible to have
the rid as optional and use it to reference in to the
skeleton:
Original
{This is
translatable text which is {/weight=+w1}bold, {/weight=+w3} italic and
bold{/weight=-w1}, and italic.{/weight=-w3}}
Skeleton
{#TU id=18#
#CODE rid=19#{/weight=-w1}
#CODE rid=20#{/weight=+w3}
#CODE rid=21#{/weight=-w1}
#CODE rid=22#{//weight=-w3}
}
XLIFF
<trans-unit id="18">
<source>This is translatable text which is <bx id="1"
rid="19"/>bold, <bx id="2" rid="20"/>italic and bold<ex id="1"
rid="21"/>, and italic<ex id="2" rid="22"/>.</source>
</trans-unit>
David Pooley
Software
Architect
SDL
International
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Levins
[mailto:]
Sent: 08 May 2003 10:21
To:
Cc:
Subject: RE:
[xliff] Re: XLIFF 1.1 Specification Working Draft 14 -
RC5
Hi John,
I fully agree with your mail, it describes
the usage we originally came up with, which in essence means that 'id'
attributes are for the general purpose of linking information to a skeletal data
while 'rid' attributes are used to refer related information within an XLIFF
document.
Regards,
Mark Levins
IBM Software Group,
Dublin
Software Laboratory,
Airways Industrial Estate,
Cloghran,
Dublin
17,
Ireland.
Phone: +353 1 704 6676
IBM
Tie Line 166676
"John Reid"
<>
07/05/2003 23:36
To
<>, "<",
<>
cc
Subject
RE: [xliff] Re: XLIFF
1.1 Specification Working Draft 14 -
RC5
Hi Doug, Yves, et al,
Doug Domeny wrote:
>Replace "These paired
elements are related via their rid attributes" (occurs
>5 times)
with:
>
>These paired
elements are matched by setting their id attributes to the same
>value.
For example, <bx id="34"/> ... <ex id="34"/>
I think we are imposing a method on the XLIFF filters and a format on the
skeletons with this change. Suppose we have a file format with the following
text:
{This is
translatable text which is {/weight=+w1}bold, {/weight=+w3} italic and
bold{/weight=-w1}, and italic.{/weight=-w3}}
Here the codes are allowed to overlap.
I've used bold and italic for simplicity but this could be complicated with more
complex codes. The filter assigns each code a separate id because without a
lookup table of some sort the filter doesn't know that /weight=+w1 means 'bold'.
It does recognize that weight=+w1 and weight=-w1 are paired. Also, the developer
of the filter did not want to regenerate codes that could as easily be stored.
Thus, the skeleton for this text may look as follows:
{#TU id=18#
#CODE id=19#{/weight=-w1}
#CODE
id=20#{/weight=+w3}
#CODE
id=21#{/weight=-w1}
#CODE
id=22#{//weight=-w3}
}
The <trans-unit> appears as
follows:
<trans-unit
id = "18">
<source>This is translatable
text which is <bx id="19" rid="1"/>bold, <bx id="20" rid="2"/>italic
and bold<ex id="21" rid="1"/>, and italic<ex id="22"
rid="2"/>.
</source>
</trans-unit>
Thus, the id attribute relates the codes in the skeleton to the inline
elements in the XLIFF. The rid attribute relates the paired codes to each
other.
If the id must
match between the the paired codes, the skeleton wouldn't store the end codes
and the postprocessor must generate those.
This is why I think that the paired codes,
<bx/>+<ex/> and <bpt>+<ept>, should be related via the
rid attribute. This gives the greatest freedom to the filter writers.
--john
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