Re: XSLT (2) namespace safe i18n patterns

>> For example, in the above example, you could just have:
>
>> <name>medical_doctor</name>
>
>> where "medical_doctor" is the key for a lookup into your
>> translations, which are held in separate files.
>
>  That's a good pattern I think, but I guess there is room for
> several approaches, depending on the real problems.  But even
> there, in order to "lookup into your translations", you need to
> tag them with their respective languages.

I would group the translations by area, with a suitable suffix (just
like Java :) for example:

helppage_en_GB.xml
helppage_de_DE.xml

Then you can easily distribute the relevant files to each translator
at the same time, add/remove them as needed, edit individual files
without fear of affecting the others, fall back to the appropriate or
default file when a translation is missing etc... all lots of benefits
over storing everything in a single file.

> I cannot see why @lang
> would be better than @xml:lang.

The reason is that with xml:lang you must adhere to that spec, with
@lang you are free to do what's best for your situation.  You could
have @lang="en_GB", or you could have @lang="English" or @lang="1",
whatever best suits the situation it is being used for.  It's the same
argument for using proprietary markup to describe links betweens
documents, rather than using xlink.





--
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/