RFC3066 bis: intro

Mark Davis mark.davis at jtcsv.com
Sat Dec 6 00:29:21 CET 2003


I think your changes are an overall improvement.

There are two cases that I think should be drawn out more clearly:
A. I need to know the language of content in order to interpret some text, and \
B. I need to know the language of the desired user in order to generate or
select content

The latter is, vastly more important in practice, and should be stressed. The
second paragraph sort-of does that, but sounds very abstract and airy (getting a
dictionary to help me understand a language), when this is a crucial mechanism
to show anything else in the user's language, such as picking an appropriate web
page!

Also, "metadata labelling" sounds odd, we are not labeling metadata, we are
labeling data.

>Such information may be
useful to specialists or may be important in understanding the structure
of the information and ways in which it should be processed.

I think this sentence should now be removed. You now cover the need in the
previous sentences, and I think this now just detracts.

Mark
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http://www.macchiato.com
► शिष्यादिच्छेत्पराजयम् ◄

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Constable" <petercon at microsoft.com>
To: <ietf-languages at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Fri, 2003 Dec 05 13:53
Subject: RFC3066 bis: intro


I'm finally getting around to catching up on this. Sorry for being slow.

Some suggested revisions for section 1:

---------
Human beings on our planet have, past and present, used a number of
languages. There are many reasons why one would want to identify the
language used when presenting or processing information.

In some contexts, information may be available in more than one
language, or resources (such as dictionaries) may be available to assist
in the understanding of different languages, and it may be necessary to
retrieve the information or resources according to linguistic
preferences specified by a user.

Also, many types of information processing require knowledge of the
language in which information is expressed in order for that process to
be performed on the information; for example spell-checking,
computer-synthesized speech, conversion to Braille, or high-quality
print renderings. The language variety of information content and of
processing resources may need to be identified so that the appropriate
processing and resources can be applied to the given content.

One means of indicating the language used in information content is by
metadata labeling using a symbolic identifier for the given language.
These identifies can also be used for labeling processing resources, and
can by used in requesting information or resources to specify linguistic
preferences or requirements.

These identifiers can also be used to indicate additional attributes of
content that are closely related to the language. In particular, it is
often necessary to indicate specific information about the dialect,
writing system, or orthography used in a document or resource, as these
attributes may be important for the user to obtain information in a form
that they can understand, or important in selecting appropriate
processing resources for the given content. Such information may be
useful to specialists or may be important in understanding the structure
of the information and ways in which it should be processed.

This document specifies...
---------


Peter

Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division

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