FW: Ruby and collation in DITA

JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services, 
Inc.
710 Kipling 
Street, Suite 400
Denver CO 80215
303-232-7586


 

 

From:  
[mailto:] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 
12:18 AM
To: Richard Ishida; 'Felix Sasaki'
Cc: JoAnn 
Hackos
Subject: RE: Ruby and collation in DITA

Hi Richard, Felix, 

I know that the DITA Translation 
subcommittee has shelved ruby for the moment (according to the 13 August 2007 
minutes), so this is largely moot until it becomes unshelved . . . but as a kind 
of parting shot, I wanted to say that you have convinced me of the need to keep 
<rp> in DITA. 

In response to 
the W3C recommendation's remark: 
> > "Some 
user agents might not understand ruby markup, or may 
> > not be able 
to render ruby text appropriately."   
I said: 
> > There are no DITA user 

> > agents that won't understand ruby markup. 

On further reflection, I'm 
wrong.  There *is* a DITA user agent that doesn't understand ruby: a topic 
that does not include the ruby domain, but wants to conref a phrase from a topic 
that understands ruby. 

<!-- 
phrases.xml --> 
<topic 
id="ja_phrases" xml:lang="ja" domains="(topic ruby)" > 
  ... 
  
  <ruby 
id="kyoto"><rb>$B5~ET(B</rb><rp>(</rp><rt>$B$-$g$&$H(B</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby> 

  ... 
</topic> 

<!-- 
Assuming that <ruby> specializes from <ph> --> 
<topic id="puller" domains=""> 
  ... 
  
<p xml:lang="ja">$B;d$O(B<ph 
conref="phrases.xml#ja_phrases/kyoto"/>$B$K9T$C$?!#(B</p> 
  ... 
</topic> 

I'd expect 
that to resolve, after generalization-during-conref, as 
  <p 
xml:lang="ja">$B;d$O(B<ph><ph>$B5~ET(B</ph><ph>(</ph><ph>$B$-$g$&$H(B</ph><ph>)</ph></ph>$B$K9T$C$?!#(B</p> 

and display as $B;d$O5~ET(B($B$-$g$&$H(B)$B$K9T$C$?!#(B in the "puller" 
topic, as a passable fallback for a topic that has no knowledge of ruby. 

Something to keep in mind whenever the need 
for ruby in DITA arises. 

-- 

Deborah Pickett
Information Architect, Moldflow Corporation, 
Melbourne
 

"Richard Ishida" <> wrote on 19/07/2007 06:58:45 
PM:

> Hello Deborah, Felix,
> 
> I haven't been able to 
follow this discussion in detail, but here are some
> thoughts that I hope 
may help...
> 
> > > there is a use case to add parenthesis if 
the processor does not 
> > > understand ruby <rp> , see 

> > http://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/#fig1.7 as an example.
> > 

> > That's certainly true of (X)HTML, which is what the TR says 

> > it is for (right at the top in the abstract).  But it's not 

> > true of DITA. 
> > 
> > The difference is in the 
opening sentence of section 1.2.2: 
> > "Some user agents might not 
understand ruby markup, or may 
> > not be able to render ruby text 
appropriately."   
> > 
> > In the context of DITA, a 
"user agent" would be the 
> > transformation stylesheets (which will 
recognize the ruby 
> > content and generate correct XHTML or PDF or 
whatever), or an 
> > editing tool (which will recognize the ruby 
content and 
> > present it to the author, perhaps with appropriate CSS 

> > :before and :after generated text).  There are no DITA user 

> > agents that won't understand ruby markup. That fact 
> > 
evaporates the need for <rp>. 
> 
> But 
> 
> [1] 
what if DITA marked up content is converted to, say, XHTML and displayed
> 
by a user agent that doesn't support ruby: how would an author indicate 
what
> type of fallback parens they wanted to use? For example, characters 
used for
> Japanese rp are likely to be different from those used in UK. 
 A DITA
> processor may not need to use rp, but I think it would make 
for more
> interoperable *content* to allow it in the markup.
> 

> [2] note that someone may actually want to display the ruby inline as 
a
> conscious presentational choice in certain contexts - see for example 
the
> CSS Ruby Module that has an 'inline' value[1] for the 'display' 
property.
> In that case, too, the author should be able to specify the 
preferred
> characters in rp elements.
> 
> I guess what I'm 
saying is, authors can ignore rp if they feel DITA
> processors are the 
only things that will see their content, but it would be
> better to allow 
for the full content model because (a) we can't always
> forsee how the 
content will be used, and (b) it won't harm the DITA
> processor.
> 

> RI
> 
> 
> [1] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css3-ruby-20021024/#properties  Note 
that
> the descriptive section for this value is missing from the spec and 
needs to
> be added.
> 
> 
> ============
> 
Richard Ishida
> Internationalization Lead
> W3C (World Wide Web 
Consortium)
>  
> http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
> 
http://www.w3.org/International/
> 
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
> 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
>  
>  
> 

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: 
 
> > [mailto:] 

> > Sent: 19 July 2007 03:23
> > To: Felix Sasaki
> 
> Cc: ; 
> > Subject: Re: 
Ruby and collation in DITA
> > 
>