[jats-list] Re: @xml:lang on <related-article>

["Randall, Laura (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [E] laura.randall@xxxxxxx" <jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks, everyone, for the thoughtful comments.

Mark, I appreciate you sending that resource and it very clearly states that
what I was going to do is absolutely the wrong thing.

To the folks who suggested I add the information about the target's language
to an element within the related-article, I agree that that is a good
solution, but only when there actually is content in the element.
Related-article can be empty and, in my case, is.

Gareth, your take that this should be a function of the delivery platform is
actually why I'm running into this problem. In PMC, it is. When we build links
between articles published in different languages, we'll pull the language
information of the target from our database and create a link that includes
the specific language information. So my trouble comes when we don't have the
target article and thus don't know what the target language is. I had
suggested to my group that we default to a generic phrase to replace the
specific language ("another language"), but a colleague pointed out that that
wasn't particularly helpful to the user.

Aaannnddd...down the rabbit hole I went.

I think Bruce brought up some good points and there are implications of JATS
having some attributes everywhere that the Standing committee didn't
necessarily anticipate. I think that in this specific case of having @xml:lang
everywhere, we (the SC) might consider adding a reference to the W3C document
to the non-normative documentation to clarify the use. But that's a suggestion
for the committee, so I'll be submitting a comment requesting this.

Again, thank you all for your comments.

Laura

________________________
Laura Randall
laura.randall@xxxxxxx
NCBI/NLM/NIH

-----Original Message-----
From: Randall, Laura (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [E] laura.randall@xxxxxxx
<jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2019 8:40 AM
To: jats-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [jats-list] @xml:lang on <related-article>

Hi, all.
I have a situation where I have the English language version of an article
that was also published in German. I want to include a related-article in the
one I have that points to the German-language version of the article, so I'm
using <related-article>. Along with the citation of the German article, I
would *like* to be able to record its language so I can build a link that
identifies the language as part of the citation (for user convenience).

I'm wondering if I can use the xml:lang attribute on the related-article
element to do this.

Now before ya'll grab your pitchforks and yell 'TAG ABUSER', hear me out.

Definition of related-article:
Description of a journal article related to the content but published
separately. May include a link to the related article.

Definition of xml:lang:
The language of the intellectual content of the element for which this is an
attribute.

So the official definition of related-article says it is a description of
another journal article and xml:lang says it specifies the language of the
intellectual content of the element. "The element" in this case describes the
target article, so my possibly twisted (out of desperation this time) take on
this is that in the same way the vol and page attributes describe the volume
and page of the target, so, too, should the xml:lang describe the target.

I'm like 99.99% positive that the Standing Committee didn't consider this use
when they(we) added xml:lang everywhere, but I think this follows the rules
and definitions.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks (and sorry),
Laura
________________________
Laura Randall
laura.randall@xxxxxxx
NCBI/NLM/NIH