Comments on BP Specify the language of the content

Initial comments on http://www.w3.org/International/its/techniques/its-techniques.html#AuthLang



Make sure to indicate the language for all elements and attributes of your document. 
 -> Indicate the language of your content.

Your DTD or schema should provide the xml:lang attribute for this purpose. See: Best Practice 1: Provide xml:lang to specify natural language content for more information.

 Well it could also provide it's own attribute if it's a legacy 
 format.  We should acknowledge that.

<q xml:lang="fr-ca">Je me souviens</q>

 Does this have to say fr-ca?  If not, fr is better.

List of applications for language.

 Should we add voice browsers?

Background information

    * Internationalization FAQ: xml:lang in XML document schemas.
      http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-when-xmllang


 I don't think this is interest to content authors.

Reference links

    * The values to use with xml:lang to specify a language.
      http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4646.txt

 I'd recommend a link to Language tags in HTML and XML
 http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/

 you should also link to the IANA subtag registry and 
 explain what it is in the text

Test data

    * I18N Tests: Automatic font assignment for CJK text.
      http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-cjk-fonts.html


 Note that this test is for text served as HTML, not XML.  You may want to create your own??

 

 I think you should also read http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html to check whether there's anything else we should say here.


 In the GEO WG we found it was a good idea to clearly signpost aspects of the description, such as How to:  Discussion: etc. to allow for quick access to the 'how do I do this?'.

Hope that's of some help,
RI



============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
 

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Received on Thursday, 15 March 2007 17:51:32 UTC