Usefulness of language annotations

I like to break into an old topic for which I believe the wrong ideas
float around, but against which I’m not yet ready to push on other
channels.

Hence I want to fish for arguments here: How useful are language
annotations via @lang?

In particular:

1) Do user agents, including assistive technology, use this
information in a way that is *actually* relevant and meaningful to the
user?

2) Isn’t, or shouldn’t, language determination primarily be made a
user agent, and not a developer responsibility?

3) Does it matter at all?

I’m presenting this here (and perhaps on one or two more lists) to
fish for arguments I may be missing. I’ve set my mind on this a while
back [1]—and would answer 1) not usefully implemented, 2) tool
responsibility, 3) probably not—but wonder if there is something that
strongly disputes my view.

Otherwise we can maybe clear up a mythical argument and requirement
that developers need to mark up languages.

Cheers,
 Jens.


[1] https://plus.google.com/+JensOMeiert/posts/PfasbPRMuX8

--
Jens O. Meiert
http://meiert.com/en/

⚐ http://coderesponsibly.org/

Received on Monday, 11 August 2014 17:11:24 UTC