Re: proposal for WG responsed to issue-88

On 06/30/2010 01:40 PM, Phillips, Addison wrote:
>
> [3] Objections to the Change Proposal to let multiple language tags
> continue to be legal
>
> The Internationalization WG is happiest with this proposal (compared to
> the others) because it is most consistent with our view that existing
> content should not be harmed or required to change the syntax of<meta>
> Content-Language, while the document processing language should be
> clearly defined, independent of document metadata, and derived
> primarily from @lang.
>
> We object to the proposal as written because, although it provides a
> workable defaulting mechanism that may help with legacy pages, it is
> likely to prolong the confusion experienced by users creating new
> pages. In the absence of a lang attribute on the<html>  tag, declaring
> language in<meta>  Content-Language will continue to produce an effect.
> Users will only find out that you shouldn't do that if they validate
> their pages - and the people we're talking about who get this wrong are
> quite likely not to validate.

s/We object to/We have concerns about/. I didn't hear consensus on
objecting to the proposal as-written, and in any case, I don't object
to it; I think it's acceptable as-is.

> The CP also proposes two methods to remove any warnings. These involve
> removing the meta and/or HTTP information rather than adding a lang
> attribute.  This seems inconsistent with the goal of encouraging people
> to use language declarations. Insertion of lang attributes is preferred
> to removing information from the page, even if that information is not
> used by user-agents.

This paragraph should move up one, so that the two paragraphs about
defaulting can be together.

> We would prefer that the CP be modified so that browsers must not guess
> at the default language for the page by looking at the HTTP headers
> and/or meta elements. This would result in a CP that does not remove or
> change the http-equiv information (as the "non-conforming" CP proposes)
> but would render it harmless.  We believe that the defaulting mechanism
> proposed will occasionally confuse users when newer features in CSS3
> (for example) are activated by the HTTP header value or by metadata
> injected by (for example) their CMS. This, of course, is an argument
> against the main raison d'être of this CP.
>
> The Internationalization WG also STRONGLY disagrees with the proposal
> to change 'pragma-set default language' to 'pragma-set locale
> language'. We feel that the definition of locale (which is to do with
> API settings) is not to be confused with the declaration of content
> language. Although these are related in some ways, in fact the "locale"
> is not set by @lang and it should not be implied to be so.
>
> Addison Phillips Globalization Architect (Lab126) Chair (W3C I18N, IETF
> IRI WGs)
>
> Internationalization is not a feature. It is an architecture.
>
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 30 June 2010 22:56:56 UTC