Hi,

I didn't get a c hance to create a polished best practices document for multilingual content. But these are the initial thoughts I came up iwith:

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Following are a proposed set of best practices for sourcing content in DITA in order to publis it within a single output document

Segregate source content by language First of all, to the extent possible, use topic-sized chunks of content. In this case, each language should have it's own topic, with file names or reference names (in a CMS) annotated by language/locale

If you are using content that cannot possible be stored in a standalone topic, you should review why this is so. If it's because the content consists of `fragment' of content, scuh as product names, or phrases, modify it to be complete sentence fragments, at the very least. For the most part, there is no reason why any complete sentence fragment couldn't have its own topic, as long as the topic title can be ignored.

If the content simply can't be stored in its own topic, store the chunks together in one or more `collection files', each chunk with its own ID string, so that they can be conref'd from the primary source document as needed. However, every chunk should consist of complete sentences, to enable appropriate creation of TM -

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The issue I'm not so sure about is publishing guidelines. I don't know just how some of the publishing pipeline work to include multi-lingual content in a single, for example, PDF output stream.

Nancy

____ Nancy Harrison IBM Rational Software Phone: 781-676-2535 nanc...@us.ibm.com

"JoAnn Hackos" <dita...@lists.oasis-open.org>, <joan...@comtech-serv.com> <cwo...@idiominc.com>, <mamb...@sdl.com>, <bhe...@sdl.com>, 10/30/2006 10:30 AM "Bryan Schnabel" <brya...@tek.com>, Charles Pau/Cambridge/IBM@Lotus, <chri...@sap.com>, <dpoo...@sdl.com>, Dave A To Schell/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, <esri...@esrig.com>, <rfle...@sdl.com>, "Howard.Schwartz" <Howa...@trados.com>, "Jennifer Linton" <jenn...@comtech-serv.com>, <ish...@w3.org>, <tony...@productinnovator.com>, <KA...@CA.IBM.COM>, <ysav...@translate.com> cc [dita-translation] FW: [dita] Groups - Subject DITA 1.1: Block and inline elements, plus translation info (elementsOnePointOne.html) uploaded

Hello Everyone,

Andrzej is not able to make today's meeting. Let's discuss Robert's additions to the inline elements for DITA 1.1 instead. Please download the information.

JoAnn

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php/18040/ele

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php/18040/ele

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/document.php?document_

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/dita/download.php/20570/ele