[DICT] use case 12

[Jeff Alexander]

I proposed "nice to have/enable" as the priority for this use case [1].  Two of you agreed, three felt it should be increased in priority, and one felt it needed more discussion.

Alex from Collins Language made this case for increasing the priority:

"We rate as should-have or must-have.  We would like to have the capability to specify that certain dictionaries are used by publications, in order to create coherent ranges."

One concrete situation I imagine here: a publisher wants to create a suite of educational titles for children ages 10-13, with an age-appropriate dictionary being one of the titles.  With some means of expressing a dictionary lookup preference in metadata, all of the titles in the suite could point to the included dictionary.  

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgaNbXmzpYW1dHdmRFZCelBWb3VWMVVzMDlpX1dLckE

[Robert Bolick]

Thanks, Jeff.  I was one who indicated "must have."   Here's my reasoning:

At a minimum, the use case in which the publisher's EPUB3 requires the preferred use of the embedded glossary should be addressed.   That is, ereader developers need to know that their reading systems are likely to encounter this pedagogically-driven requirement.  Publishers who assume that the glossaries or embedded dictionaries they build will be the default need to know that they have make it possible for reading systems to detect that.

Otherwise, to take your example, educational publishers are likely to create a host of proprietary ereaders/ebooks in order to enforce the pedagogical requirement, which in the US arises from the market (i.e., the state boards of education).   If, with EPUB3, a publisher cannot meet the possible requirement to provide embedded age-specific glossaries with their Reading Programs, they will seek formats, readers or browsers that will enable them to do so.

Cheers,

BobB

--
Robert Bolick

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/robert-bolick/4/8bb/ba2

[Jeff Alexander]

Thanks for your comments, Bob.

I agree with your point on glossaries. Preferred use of an embedded glossary is addressed separately in use case #11, which we've agreed on as 'must enable'.  So our prioritization of #12 doesn't need to take glossary concerns into account, since they're addressed elsewhere.

My own feeling is that I see the importance of this for dictionaries, but that it is not quite a "must". We could have a workable system without it that still addresses all the essential functions of a dictionary.  However, this is a worthwhile capability for publishers to have, and I could accept calling it 'should enable'.