[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Multi-lingual experiment - a call for action
Hi Alexander, Alexander said: a) translating the DTD doesn't help much, because then we won't be able to produce one unified XML document that contains all the languages we need for testing purposes Didier replies: You probably missed something in the original post. I said that the experiment would be about the output of a data source. As we all know. Do we? most actual data source fields and tables are already encoded in native languages. If you do a request to these data sources, you'll get a document having a native language DTD. So, I asked for translation in different language because, if these are all translation of the same DTD (I mean same semantics not necessarily same language ;-) people can pick the one they want to use for their test and recognized what is meant. Also, any experiment has to be with invariant and variables, we choused to have an invariant syntax for a particular domain language (even if this represent the output of a data source it is a kind of domain language) the syntax and structure rules are based on the XML recommendations, an invariant semantic (the fields meaning and structure are invariant) but we'll have variable language encoding of the element, attribute and data content. Alexander said: b) it would be better to include longer test passages in the sample document so that there is something that can really be translated Didier replies: It is not an experiment about translating content but more an experiment to show a possible usage of XML as an output format for data sources. As we know, data repositories contain native language fields and tables names, therefore, any request to these data sources will result with a document having a native language DTD encoding. The experiment or experiments will show how we can use the XML framework technologies to manipulate these documents and maybe, the by-product of these experiments will be that people will discover that what is more important is the semantics not the language used to encode the elements and attributes. Also, maybe discover that tools like XSLT can also be used as translation tools not only as transformation tools. And finally, maybe discover something I even didn't envision yet. The whole purpose of this experiment is to _explore_ the implications of multi-lingual environments, data source data exchange (between data sources encoded with different schemas and data sources fields and tables encoded in different native languages - as we'll encounter in the real world) Alexander said: c) due to the inherent unsuitability of UCS-2 (aka Unicode 16-bit) for transmission over the Internet in anything but ZIPped or Base-64 encoded form, I would suggest we stick to UTF-8, which any suitable XML editor will process correctly Didier replies: Yes I agree I discovered that myself during the weekend. You are right, it is a lot easier to encode the documents with UTF-8 than with UTF-16. And I discovered that, for instance, Windows' wordPAD can be used to edit documents encoded in UTF-8 but not UTF-16. So, yes, your point is well taken Alexander. [.. post about xml spy...] Its OK for your own experiment to use XHTML since you wanted to demonstrate the UTF-8 capabilities of your editor. The actually proposed experiment has a different knowledge target and different purpose. It is not a commercial demonstration, more an experiment to explore the XML usage for data sources in a context as close as possible to the cultural environments experimented in the day to day realities. It is not about knowledge encoding but more about data source result encoding (even if some explicit or tacit knowledge may be encoded in data sources - but this is an other story...). cheers Didier PH Martin ---------------------------------------------- Email: martind@n... Conferences: XML Europe (http://www.gca.org) Book: XML Professional (http://www.wrox.com) column: Style Matters (http://www.xml.com) Products: http://www.netfolder.com *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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