[Clipart] Text labels in SVGs

[Frederik Elwert]

Hello!

Am Mittwoch, den 07.11.2007, 22:46 +1100 schrieb Brianna Laugher:
> A technical question for SVG experts. :)
> It is possible to use text labels in SVGs especially in maps and
> diagrams. see e.g.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:African_language_families.svg
> .
> Is there some formalised way of representing multiple languages within
> the same file?

Yes, there is:

http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/i18n.html

You can specify a systemLanguage attribute on the text, and let it be
rendered depending on the system locale. This is especially useful in
conjunction with a switch element.

> At the moment on Wikimedia each time someone translates the labels on
> an SVG, they upload a separate file. I am wondering whether it would
> be preferable to be able to store all the labels within a single SVG,
> maybe have a default that shows up and the others are invisible, and
> then later reference them like
> 
> [[image:foo.svg|language=en]]
> 
> Does SVG have any kind of protocol or whatever around how language
> text should be represented?

I have no idea if it is possible to affect the rendered language in any
other way than the system locale.

Another way might be to use xml:lang instead, and control the rendering
of the text with CSS. I don't know if any SVG viewers already support
CSS3 selectors like :target, but this would be a nice way to control the
displayed language via the URL.

Or you keep one file per language, but use xml2po for the translation
process.

Cheers,
Frederik