- <item>
- <title>Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
-the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
-this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
-also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
-this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
-with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
-correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
-case for the language
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
-am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
-
-<p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
-because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
-all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
-dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
-of them do not handle it at all.</p>
-
-<p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
-this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
-variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
-two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
-is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
-Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
-many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
-is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
-In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
-alias for 'nb'.</p>
-
-<p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
-understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
-(BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
-language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
-recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
-'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
-code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
-at the same time. :(</p>
-
-<p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
-take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
-processors. :(</p>
-
-<p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-