XML News from Tuesday, May 23, 2006

The W3C Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has posted the first public working draft of Best Practices for XML Internationalization. "This document provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents and schemas that are internationalized properly. Following the best practices describes here allow both the developer of XML applications, as well as the author of XML content to create material in different languages." Suggestions include:

• Provide a way to specify language contenthttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Provide a way to specify text directionalityhttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Avoid translatable attributeshttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Indicate the translatability of elements and attributeshttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Provide a way to override translatability informationhttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Provide text segmentation-related informationhttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Provide a way to specify ruby texthttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Provide a way to specify unique identifiershttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• Specify the language of the contenthttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Override text directionality if neededhttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Override translatability information if neededhttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Assign unique identifiers to text items when possiblehttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Use CDATA sections with cautionhttp://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xml-i18n-bp-20060518/#Provide comments for translators

This draft is very rough, and I'm not sure I agree with everything they say. "Avoid translatable attributes" sounds very questionable to me, though there is a rationale for it. Feedback is requested,