Multilingual DocBook documents...

Subject: Multilingual DocBook documents...
From: Norman Walsh <norm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 15:55:07 -0500
Hello,

In some private correspondence, I was reminded that DocBook has
a LANG attribute on most elements, so shouldn't the choice of
language really be document based not stylesheet based?  Instead
of selecting a language by modifying the stylesheet, shouldn't
the stylesheet support all languages simultaneously?

I like the idea and I was able to implement a scheme that satisfies
me, but...there are some interesting issues regarding how generated
text in a multilingual document should work.

Given:

<chapter label="1" lang=usen id=foo> ...
  See <xref linkend=bar>.
</chapter>

<chapter label="2" lang=dege id=bar> ... 
  See <xref linkend=foo>.
</chapter>

Should the stylesheet be sensitive to the language of the element
linked to:

   Chapter 1 ... See Kapitel 2
   Kapitel 2 ... See Chapter 1

or sensitive to the current language:

   Chapter 1 ... Chapter 2
   Kapitel 2 ... Kapitel 1

The latter is easier, but the former might make more sense.  (If
we imagine that the chapter xref included the title, and the
title of the German chapter was in German, we'd want the xref to
format in the German context, yes?)  Or should it do something
else?

And what about the Table of Contents? Sensitive to the language
of the components:

  Chapter 1 ..... 3
  Kapitel 2 ..... 19

or sensitive to the LANG attribute on the wrapper around the TOC?

  Chapter 1 ..... 3   or  Kapitel 1 ..... 3 
  Chapter 2 ..... 19	  Kapitel 2 ..... 19

Does anyone want to weigh in with an opinion?  (And the opinion
that both are useful and the stylesheet should have a
configuration option to select the desired result will be
frowned upon, even though it may turn out to be the right one ;-)

--norm




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