[Scrollkeeper-devel] Better internationalization support

[Bob S. <bo...@sc...>]

> 2. This is the long discussed document ID and this is what I would like
> to address. We want an ID that is the same a document and all of its
> translations and it allows to find the English doc if the translated one
> is not there or fall back to other translations of the doc (like first
> to German then to English if the French is not there. I think the main
> problem is not how to implement the fallback mechanism, but how to
> assign these IDs, how to make the docwriters, translators to request the
> ID and how to send it to them. It should be very easy for anybody to
> generate an ID like this. Then I think it should be down to the
> docwriters, translators to make sure to use the same ID for a doc and
> all of its translations. Uidgen was mentioned to be used to generate the
> IDs. As this is not available on every platform a web based request
> mechanism with a Linux server could be a good approach (like ask the
> Linux server for a number). This should probably all be hidden inside a
> Scrollkeeper script or binary that just retrieves an ID whenever run. 

> Any thoughts?

> Laszlo

In December, I posted an alternative approach
using URNs.  I didn't get any response at the time,
perhaps because my mail was so long.  8^)
A URN is human comprehensible, can be generated
locally without tools, and, by following a simple
namespace convention, can be globally unique.

The syntax of a URN is:

   urn:namespaceID:documentID

The "urn:" part is fixed, and the other two parts
are assigned by the document originator.
Each organization can define its own namespaceID,
and then they just need to keep their own documentIDs
unique within that namespace.

The key to global uniqueness is ensuring that
each namespaceID is unique.  This can generally
be achieved today by following the convention
of using their own IP name, such as apache.org
or ldp.org.  If an individual lacks an IP name, they can apply
to OMF to register their documents under the omf.org
namespace.

So the LDP could use URNs such as:

urn:ldp.org:SysAdminG
urn:ldp.org:ls.man.1
etc.

I've attached my original mail which provides further
background information and references on URNs.

bobs
Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.              fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bo...@sc...