Internationalization techniques:
Developing schemas

This page lists links to resources on the W3C Internationalization Activity site and elsewhere that help you develop schemas for markup formats with internationalization in mind. It is one of several techniques pages.

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Language

Defining markup for labelling natural language

Best practices checklist
  • Make sure the xml:lang attribute is defined for the root element of your document, and for any element where a change of language may occur. more
  • If legacy markup exists, provide an ITS Rules document where you use the its:langRule element to specify what attribute or element is used instead of xml:lang. more
  • Allow xml:lang to take a null value to specify that the language is undetermined. more
  • Use xml:lang to refer to the language of the content of an element, but define a new attribute when the language value is really an attribute of or metadata about some external content. more
How to's
Background reading

Markup & text

Defining markup for ruby text

Best practices checklist
  • Make sure the its:ruby element and its children are defined for all elements where there is text content. more
  • If legacy markup exists, provide an ITS Rules document where you use the its:rubyRule element to associate your ruby markup with its equivalent in ITS. more
How to's
Background reading
  • A brief explanation of ruby (W3C article).

  • An overview of the Ruby Annotation and CSS3 Ruby specifications (W3C article).

Defining markup for unique identifiers

Best practices checklist
  • Make sure that elements with translatable content can be associated with a unique identifier. more
How to's
Background reading

Defining markup related to terminology

Best practices checklist
  • Provide an ITS Rules document where you use its:termRule elements to indicate which elements are terms and information related to them (e.g. definitions). more
  • For new or updated formats, make sure the its:term and the its:termInfoRef attributes are defined for any element that is text content. more
  • For new or updated formats, consider defining the its:rules element in your schema, for example in a header if there is one, and the its:termRule element, which can be used to override terminology-related information globally. more
How to's
Background reading

Working with multilingual documents

Best practices checklist
  • For documents that need to go through some localization tasks, always store the localized version of the text in a separate document. more
How to's

Naming elements and attributes

Best practices checklist
  • Make sure the names of the elements and attributes of your schema reflect their functions, rather than one possible way of rendering their content. more
  • Wherever possible, avoid element names which do not follow a fixed naming scheme (for example, element names that serve also as identifiers). more
How to's
Background reading
  • Can I write HTML and XML element and attribute tag names in languages and scripts other than English? (W3C article)

Defining a span-like element

Best practices checklist
  • For new or updated formats, make sure you define a span-like element in your schema that will allow authors to associate arbitrary content with properties such as directionality, language information, etc. more
How to's

Text direction

Defining markup to specify text direction

Best practices checklist
  • Make sure the its:dir attribute is defined for the root element of your document, and for any element that has text content. more
  • Provide an ITS Rules document where you use the its:dirRule element to associate the different directionality indicators with their equivalents in ITS. more
How to's
Background reading

Supporting localization

Defining which elements and attributes should be translated

Best practices checklist
  • Make sure you store all text that will need to be translated as element content, not as attribute values. more
  • If legacy markup exists, provide an ITS Rules document where you use the its:translateRule element to specify what attributes indicate that text is to be translated. more
  • Provide an ITS Rules document where you use its:translateRule elements to indicate which elements are not to be translated, and which attributes are to be translated. By default, it will be expected that elements are to be translated and attributes are not. more
  • For new or updated formats, make sure the its:translate attribute is defined for the root element of your documents, and for any element that has text content. more
  • Consider defining the its:rules element in your schema, for example in a header if there is one, and within that the its:translateRule element, so that content authors can globally change the default translate rules for specific elements and attributes. more
  • If legacy markup exists, provide an ITS Rules document where you use the its:translateRule element to associate this markup with the ITS Translate data category. more
How to's
Background reading

Providing information related to text segmentation

Best practices checklist
  • Provide an ITS Rules document where you use its:withinTextRule elements to indicate which elements should be treated as either part of their parents, or as a nested but independent run of text. By default, element boundaries are assumed to correspond to segmentation boundaries. more
How to's

Defining markup for notes to localizers

Best practices checklist
  • For new or updated formats, define the attributes its:locNote, its:locNoteType and its:locNoteRef in your schema. more
  • For new or updated formats, consider defining the its:rules element in your schema, for example in a header, and within that the its:locNoteRule element and its related markup. more
  • If legacy markup exists, provide an ITS Rules document where you use the its:locNoteRule element to associate your notes markup with its equivalent in ITS. more
How to's

Documenting internationalization and localization features of your schema

Best practices checklist
  • Document the internationalization and localization aspects of your schema by providing a set of relevant ITS rules in a single standalone ITS Rules document. more
How to's