[MOBY-dev] xml:lang the story isn't pretty...

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi all,

One of the TODO's that was assigned to me was the task of getting MOBY  
Central prepared for multi-lingual support.  I've been investigating how  
to do this, and it looks like it is going to be a bit of a blocker.

According to the XML specification, the xml:lang attribute is supposed to  
apply to the node it is in, and any sub-node until another xml:lang  
attribute is encountered.  Unfortunately, most of the XML parsing  
libraries in Perl do not even notice the xml:lang attribute as "special",  
so you only have access to it as a normal attribute in the node where it  
is included.

There is one XML parsing library in Perl that does keep track of this  
attribute (XML::LibXML::Reader); however that is not available on Windows  
using ActiveState's Perl and PPM, which is what most Windows users will be  
using, I suspect.. (though I know it is possible to use Cygwin also).  I  
also looked at the "theoryx" PPM repository in Winnipeg, which usually has  
some odd modules that you can't get anywhere else, but it isn't there  
either.

So... I guess there are several possibilities:

1)  we attempt to compile XML::LibXML::Reader on Windows and distribute it  
as part of Moby

1a)  we modify XML::LibXML such that it does recognize and make note of  
this attribute, and contribute that back to the authors

2)  I re-code Moby such that it traverses back up the XML tree looking for  
the last xml:lang attribute for every node that has content.

3)  We put an additional constraint on the rules of XML, requiring that  
the xml:lang attribute must be present in the same node in which the  
multilingul content is present.

4)  ??? give up :-)


Can someone have a quick look at how well xml:lang is supported on the  
Java side, since that will help us make the decision on what to do.  If it  
isn't supported in the Java libraries either, then maybe #3 is the only  
rational (ugly) solution?

M




-- 
--
Mark Wilkinson
Assistant Professor, Dept. Medical Genetics
University of British Columbia
PI Bioinformatics
iCAPTURE Centre, St. Paul's Hospital
Tel:  604 682 2344 x62129
Fax:  604 806 9274

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