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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