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Re: Foreign Names

• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• To: "XML-DEV (E-mail)" <xml-dev@x...>
• Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 16:47:17 -0400

I think Don Park's right for asking the question, Rick Jelliffe's right for
questioning the question, and Steven Champeon's right that it should be an
easy transformation.

XML 1.0 opened the door to widespread use of Unicode names all over the
globe, but provided no tools for managing such names.  DTDs simply don't
handle equivalence, and there's no way to validate a Japanese-element-name
version against an English-element-name DTD.

So far as I can tell (remember+a quick search of the latest draft), schemas
don't provide any i18n features of this sort either.  Equivalence classes
appear to be about structures, not names, though I could be wrong.

It doesn't seem like establishing a mechanism for translation equivalence
should be that difficult, and I'd like to see it be something easier than
writing style sheets or little programs.  

I'd like to be able to keep Windhoek in contact with Kabul with Samarra
with Bangkok with Brussels with Jakarta with Santiago with Montreal, but
not have to expect everyone along the way to work in English or some other
language they don't read.

I hesitate to propose additional features for XML Schemas, but this might
be worth looking at.  At the very least, it seems like a much-needed
feature that should be considered in packaging.

(Maybe it's just that I'm an American of Quebecois and Irish descent who
doesn't speak French or Irish but cheers for the Parti Quebecois and
efforts to revive Irish Gaelic anyway.)

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com

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    • From: "Don Park" <donpark@d...>

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    • From: David Megginson <david@m...>
  • Re: Foreign Names
    • From: Steven Champeon <schampeo@h...>

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