It occurs to me that one risk of not factoring out the language
specific aspects is that changes or improvements made in the 'base
styles' don't cascade to the other languages, leaving them to bit-
rot, especially if some non-compatible change is made.
OTOH, if the complexity increase of maintaining them linked to the
main style, then that becomes a blocker too (and potentially a more
serious one, at least from my english-centric PoV).
--J
On Jul 5, 2006, at 7:02 PM, David Wilson wrote:
My guess is that for the final production version that would
eventually ship
with OpenOffice, would need need either separate language versions
of the CSL
files or internationalization via the use strings in a separate
files.
In styles like Chicago there are a few language specific strings like
"Publisher not known". Although I do not know enough styles to know
if this
is the case with all of them
If as you say using lookup language strings makes the csl files to0
complex,
then producing separate language versions may not be as difficult
as it may
first seem. This can be done through macro processors or other
conversion
tools. This could made easier if the csl files could include a
indicator for
the strings that may need language conversion.
Using this approach the user can modify their own standalone csl
files, and
can even share them on web site as we have discussed before.
David
On Thursday 06 July 2006 2:29 am, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
I think it's time to move this to the relevant lists:
Awhile back I made the decision (after soliciting comments) that all
CSL files would be language-specific. I did this because in the real
world of academic publishing (which is really the target) styles are
almost by definition language-specific. One does not typically use
more
generic styles like APA or Chicago, but publisher or journal specific
variations, each of which are aimed at a particular target
audience and
language.
Matthias Steffens has suggested I allow for optional
internationalization extensions, so that if a non-english user, say,
was using the "apa" style (defined in english), it would lookup the
strings in a separate file.
My worry about this approach is it adds needless complexity (flles
are
more complex, no longer self-contained, etc.), for unclear benefit.
Yes, in some cases it will result in redundancy and duplication, but
does that really matter in this case?
I can get into specifics if needed, but thought I'd start with the
basic question of requirements/use case.
1) Do we care about localization within styles? Should a user be able
to define (and choose) a style independent of language?
2) Is it important that style files be self-contained?
Anything else?
Bruce
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David N. Wilson
Co-Project Lead for the Bibliographic
OpenOffice Project
http://bibliographic.openoffice.org
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