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w3c / sync-media-pub

Repository of the Synchronized Multimedia for Publications Community Group
http://w3c.github.io/sync-media-pub
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If `xml:lang` then direction is also needed... #54

Open iherman opened 3 years ago

iherman commented 3 years ago

(Looking ahead of a possible i18n review...)

The document mentions the usage of xml:lang. As far as I can see, the only element that is affected by this is metadata; according to the content model that is the only element which, potentially, may contain human-readable text. However, if the language is set, then we also have to have the possibility to set the base direction, ie, a sync:dir attributes becomes necessary (copying, e.g., the EPUB attribute).

I see these possibilities:

  1. We leave the spec as is, and introduce sync:dir
  2. We do not mention xml:lang in the content model, and we say (e.g., in a note) that the various metadata from "any metainformation structuring language" are supposed to define ways of setting language and base direction and this specification does not deal with the problem.
iherman commented 3 years ago

Note that SMIL pretty much ignores the language and base directionality issue (unless I missed it); alas!, there wasn't such a strong i18n review practice in W3C back then.

marisademeglio commented 3 years ago

You're right that we have mistakenly left out dir. As for where language and dir could be applicable, I could see the document itself having a language declaration -- this could go in metadata like you wrote.

However, the sync:label attribute (which provides a label for a track) is human-readable text and could have a language + direction. And to express that properly, we should probably allow many sync:labels, whereas right now we only have one .. and then we should probably make it an element and not an attribute.

Or, we choose your (2) above and also drop sync:label, and leave it up to the user agents to provide labels for tracks, based on our (TBD) list of common track types. E.g.

<sync:track sync:trackType="soundfx" ... />

where soundfx comes from our registered track types list (see your comment).

And that should be enough information for a user agent to label the track itself, and use its own localization settings.

iherman commented 3 years ago

Ah! I missed sync:label. Yes, if we keep it then this means we definitely need sync:dir.

Whether we need it or not: I cannot really comment on that; I miss the necessary usage experience.