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Re: DAVENPORT: Re: Maintaing documents for multiple languages
Karl Eichwalder <ke@gnu.franken.de> writes:
> I'm pretty sure, those techinques will do more harm than good. The
> "lang" attribute was invented to specify the contents of an element, not
> to impose conditionals at the document level.
I don't see on what grounds this could be considered misuse? But read
on, Eduardo Gutentag corrected me on my formulation of the issue.
> Misusing attributes might
> work (with DokBook), but will fail with other DTDs for sure (TEI) -- if
> you don't want to do dirty tricks:
>
> <chapter>
> <title lang=en>Goethe in Italy</title>
> <title lang=de>Goethe in Italien</title>
Well, of course, this would have to use the corrected notation:
<title><phrase lang=en>Goethe in Italy</phrase>
<phrase lang=de>Goethe in Italien</phrase></title>
> <para role=quotation lang=de>
> Auch ich in Arkadien!
> </para>
>
> (Yes, I wish, that this quote will appear in the english text
> _untranslated_.)
Assuming you are handling this on the DSSSL or XSL level, there's no
reason why you couldn't handle this properly in the stylesheet.
> XML isn't the answer to all questions ;-)
Maybe it's the answer to a question I never asked. :)
> BTW, mixing langauges in one file is considered to fail in the long run;
> it might work with only two languages, but will get hairy with three or
> more.
Exactly my argument against slice. As for my argument against marked
sections, which I've used in great depth, the problem is they are
rather restricting and cumbersome to deal with, especially when you
want logical (AND, OR) relations.
> You'll need specialized tools that will "link" the componends via IDs.
> Unfortunately, no free tools are available. Emacs/PSGML is missing this
> feature.
I deny you really want this.
--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>