ID for language-invariant strings

Debbie Garside debbie at ictmarketing.co.uk
Mon Mar 17 22:41:02 CET 2008


Peter wrote:
 

Key

 

 


Name ID

Lang ID

Use

Value


1

en

English display name

¡°Microsoft YaHei¡±


1

zh-Hans

Chinese display name

¡°Î¢ÈíÑźڡ±


1

??

Language-neutral reference name

¡°Microsoft YaHei¡±

 
I would probably use something like zxx-x-refname.  The use would then be
twofold as application designers when discussing fonts would always refer to
the font by its refname - could avoid a lot of confusion.
 
Best wishes
 
Debbie
 


  _____  

From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
[mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Peter Constable
Sent: 14 March 2008 16:07
To: Michael Everson; ietf-languages at iana.org
Subject: RE: ID for language-invariant strings



> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-

 

 

> >An OpenType font can have strings for family name (or other various

> >data categories) in multiple languages, but for good

> >internationalization design, what should be passed in programming

> >APIs or put in markup for purposes of selecting a font resource

> >should be completely independent of the current user's UI language.

> 

> I understand.

 

...

 

> >The language identifier (for which I'm spec'ing the use of BCP 47)

> >constitutes part of the key used to index all of the string

> >resources in an OpenType font, so I need to use an ID from the same

> >identifier space.

> 

> I don't understand. "fa" is your language. What "language tag" are

> you using to access the translations?

 

Let me give a concrete example, which should make this clear. Consider the
Microsoft YaHei font: the 'name' table has strings for various data
categories, and for a given data category there may be strings in various
languages. Consider the data category Family (name ID 1): there are display
strings for English and for Simplified Chinese. But we also want a entry
that would be the Family name that gets used when the font is referenced in
text-drawing APIs or document markup; it doesn't matter at all whether
that's the English or Chinese (or some other) name. But it does need a
separate entry in the 'name' table, and it will need a BCP47 tag as part of
its key. Thus:

 


Key

 

 


Name ID

Lang ID

Use

Value


1

en

English display name

¡°Microsoft YaHei¡±


1

zh-Hans

Chinese display name

¡°Î¢ÈíÑźڡ±


1

??

Language-neutral reference name

¡°Microsoft YaHei¡±

 

 

I need a language tag to replace ??.

 

 

 

Peter

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