I18N-ISSUE-212: HTML5 in the ITS spec [.prep-ITS-20]

I18N-ISSUE-212: HTML5 in the ITS spec [.prep-ITS-20]

http://www.w3.org/International/track/issues/212

Raised by: Richard Ishida
On product: .prep-ITS-20

There was a thread on www-international [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-international/2013JanMar/0044.html] sparked by a comment about the relationship of its:term to dfn in HTML5 which can be widened to a more general discussion, ie. should the ITS spec fully describe the relationship between other elements and and attributes in HTML5 that relate to the data categories in ITS (see Yves' comments at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-international/2013JanMar/0044.html]

In discussing this with Felix during the i18n WG telecon, we concluded that ITS is trying to normatively specify relationships between HTML5 markup and ITS data categories only where a normative and complete relationship is tenable, ie. lang and translate attributes in HTML5 are examples where the markup is fully consistent with ITS data categories and cannot be used in other ways, so a normative link can be established.

Not all HTML5 markup can be linked to ITS so completely. For example, its:term could be represented in HTML5 by dfn element, or by a dt element, but either of those elements could also be used for another purpose. HTML5 markup that can't be associated uniquely with ITS data categories in this way will be described in the Best Practices document.

If this is what the ITS group intends, then I think the ITS specification needs significant editorial work to make this clearer.

For example, section 1.1.1 Relation to ITS 1.0 says "While ITS 1.0 addressed only XML, ITS 2.0 specifies implementations of data categories in both XML and HTML".  And 1.1.2 New Principles says: "ITS 2.0 data categories are intended to be format neutral, with support for XML, HTML, and NIF: a data category implementation only needs to support a single content format mapping in order to support a claim of ITS 2.0 conformance". And 1.4 Usage in HTML says "ITS 2.0 adds support for usage in HTML."  These statements give the impression that ITS will fully describe the relationships between ITS and HTML5 in the spec.

I think it will also help to clarify, where examples related to HTML5 appear (for example, Example 44 in the section on Terminology), that these only illustrate some of the ways in which some of the markup in HTML could be mapped to ITS, and do not relate to normative behaviour, and they are not exhaustive.

[This comment benefited from discussion by the i18n WG, but is sent on my own account.]

Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2013 17:55:36 UTC