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Re: Foolin' around with multilingual and German and datatyping
I'm lost. What's going on? Where's this taking us? What's this
translation business have to do with XML?
Regardless, what do various and sundry natural languages have to do with
the internal attributes or tags of the markup? Pick one language for
your tags and be done with it - preferably using some kind of naming
rules based on ISO 11179. I suggest that the language (used for
markup) be English. It's ubiquitous among IT and business folks and is
the least ethnocentric (i.e., the vast majority of speakers are
non-English, including myself). Are you confusing markup (tags) with
the data to be carried between those tags? Non-English languages, and
indeed languages not written in the Latin alphabet, can and will be used
for data content - this is the data that the consumer or non-programmer
will see on his Web form or report.
Markup is for programmers and software, using a limited vocabulary. Why
would you introduce unnecessary variability into the markup by changing
the tags willy-nilly? Of course, the data - the character stuff
contained between the start and end XML tags - can be in any language
supported by UNICODE.
Yes, "[e]ncoding currencies is fairly important for xml use in business.
As are logicals." That's why everyone would expect you to use a currency
code from ISO 4217. SEPARATE THE DATA FROM THE PRESENTATION: it's the
problem of the stylesheet or application to take the USD, EUR or GBP
currency codes (which everyone in the world would recognize since
they're standard ISO 4217) from the XML and display $, the euro symbol
or £, respectively, if that were desired. Using currency symbols -
either in the data, the markup tag or even an attribute - introduces
ambiguity: what's $ stand for? When used domestically within the U.S.,
it's understood to be USD. Likewise, it's used within Canada to denote
CAD. And within Mexico to denote MXN (the "new" Peso). And booleans can
be understood the world over with the values true, false, 1 or 0. On the
other hand, who would understand "Ya" in your "German" example? Isn't it
"ja"? Stick with the XSD "boolean" datatype and avoid misunderstandings.
William J. Kammerer
Novannet
Columbus, OH 43221-3859 • USA
+1 (614) 487-0320
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Lyon" <david.lyon@c...>
To: <xml-dev@l...>
Sent: Monday, 28 February, 2005 01:18 AM
Subject: Foolin' around with multilingual and German and
datatyping...
As ever fooling around, convinced that maybe in some decade to come
there has to be an xml 2.0, and it doesn't need to be binary....
I had a german associate send me his translation of the following data
record. And then I got one done in mandarin. This internet makes the
world such a small place....
If anybody on this list knows any other languages and is happy to
translate, I'd appreciate them also.
What I really am checking for is how the structuring works in other
languages. Ie the boolean operators, dates and currency fields.
<Customer Information>
// -- This is a comment
Name&="Bundy Residence"
Apartment_Number#=10
Street_Number#=5
Balance$=3500.00
Date_Joined@=2005-02-06
Membership_Valid=True
</Customer Information>
<Kundeninformation>
// -- das ist ein kommentar
Name&="Bundy Residenz"
Apartenment_Nummer#=10
Straßen_nummer#=5
Saldo€=3500,00
Eintrittsdatum@=2005-02-06
Mitgliedschaft?=Ya
</kundeninformation>
and in mandarin...
<????>
// - ??????
??&="Bundy Residence"
???#=10
??#=5
???=3500
????@=2005-02-06
?????=??
</????>
Apparently, I'm told that our numeric values are ok in computer systems
in china. This is their currency symbol, ? the yuan... in japanese, it
would be the ¥ yen.
I found a good page for currency symbols....
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/currency_symbols.html
Encoding currencies is fairly important for xml use in business. As are
logicals.
I can see that way back when xml was first framed that the concept of
"sending" data to another computer probably wasn't even imagined. Or
certainly not in the way that we know it now.
Now all these fantastic things... like unicode.. that we never had
before ... that we can take for granted... I think there are so many
exciting frontiers for xml...
btw, I think most known parsers will break if you inject them with any
of this data...
so please don't try any of these tricks at home....
--
Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win.
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