The Internationalisation Tag Set - What Happened Next

The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) work at the W3C, led by Yves Savourel, defines a standard to support better internationalisation and localisation of schemas and XML documents (both existing and new ones). The standard proposes a set of data categories, for which it then defines implementations as a set of elements and attributes. It also provides examples of how ITS can be used with popular existing markup schemes such as DocBook and DITA, and in three schema languages, XML DTDs, XML Schema, and RELAX NG.

The first version of the standard is nearing completion. It addresses how to identify translatable vs. non-translatable content, localisation notes, terminology references, directionality of text, language markup, inline elements, and ruby annotation.

The aim is to ensure that XML formats support features needed for international use and for efficient localisation. It should also make the job of vendors easier by standardising the format and processing expectations of localisation-related markup items, and allowing translation tools to more effectively identify how content should be handled.

The talk will use examples to acquaint you better with ITS and its relevance to the localisation community.