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Editor's Note: If you are new to standards and want to understand what advantages standards have to offer, we invite you to download this brief presentation by Arle Lommel at http://www.lisa.org/standards/standards.swf. (LISA expresses its gratitude to SDL for production assistance with this presentation.)

TBX

TBX ;/a>is currently being revised in response to feedback received from the national delegates to ISO TC37. The revised version will be submitted to ISO TC37 for approval as a Draft International Standard (ISO 30042), at the beginning of 2008.

LISA is delighted to announce that Kara Warburton, long-time chair of the LISA Terminology SIG and IBM Terminologist, has received support from IBM to assume project management of TBX until the revised standard is accepted by ISO. Alan Melby of BYU Provo, one of the initial developers of TBX, will also continue to contribute his experience and knowledge to the revised standard as its editor. With leadership in their capable hands, TBX is well-positioned to become an even stronger standard as it heads towards adoption by ISO as an international standard.

Idiom Technologies is also generously providing substantial technical assistance and staff time to assist with technical development of TBX. One of the key areas in which Idiom is contributing is in the development of a tool to automatically generate RelaxNG-format schemas for TBX-compliant formats. This capability, which was requested by a number of individuals, is expected to broaden support for TBX by improving support for the format in general-purpose XML tools. The RelaxNG schema tool will be presented on October 25 during the LISA Forum Europe in Berlin.

A number of companies have commented that TBX is too complex for many applications. Therefore, in response to the more basic needs of small- and medium-sized terminology databases and applications, which do not require the full set of data element types provided in TBX, the LISA Terminology SIG and OSCAR are collaborating on the development of a "lighter" version of TBX. This format will be included as an annex to ISO 30042 as an example implementation of TBX.

The LISA Terminology SIG has also requested that TBX itself be updated to include a new type of data that can enhance the use of terminology in the localization of user interfaces and other industry-specific environments. ISO TC37 is currently developing an electronic registry for recording and sharing information about these types of data (the Data Category Registry, or DCR), and the data element types in TBX will be added to the DCR to facilitate the exchange of terminological data.

LISA extends its hearty thanks to Kara, Alan, IBM, and the Idiom team for their strong support of TBX and commitment to ensure that it moves forward.

TMX AND SRX

TMX 2.0 and SRX 2.0 are nearing public release. The OSCAR committee has been hard at work behind the scenes on updates to these standards as well as on other projects. Expect to hear more about the new versions of these flagship standards in the near future with articles on how to implement the standards. These versions will improve compatibility with XLIFF and resolve issues related to segmentation that have kept users from realizing the full potential of TMX.

XLIFF

XLIFF 1.2 is now in the final stages of adoption as an official OASIS standard. A number of LISA standards refer to and make use of XLIFF 1.2, so its adoption will help simplify use of LISA standards such as xml:tm and the forthcoming TMX 2.0. Tools developers will now be able to draw on a common set of features for XLIFF and LISA standards. Congratulations to the XLIFF Technical Committee on their achievement.

The Outlook on Standards

Localization standards are becoming more mature as the new versions of the core standards mentioned above address issues that have arisen with previous versions and extend functionality to meet current needs. LISA’s increasing cooperation with ISO will also help move localization standards forward to ensure that our industry’s needs are met within other international standards. Although the work on standards is often a hard and thankless task, we are now at the stage where our industry will see increasing return on its investment in standards.

Make Your Voice Heard

OSCAR is looking for active LISA members to participate in the development of LISA standards. If you would like to have your voice heard, please contact Arle Lommel at arle@lisa.org. We are also interested in hearing from any and all vendors and developers (whether LISA members or not) about the standards that their tools support. If you don’t support OSCAR standards (where they are relevant), please email Arle to let us know what it would take to help you implement the standards. We look forward to hearing from you!

Editor's Note: We thank Kara Warburton for her assistance in authoring this article.