- From: <jon@hackcraft.net>
- Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 17:27:09 +0000
- To: W3C WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> ATM, in order to 'pass' tests, you have to use XHTML 1.0 Transitional and put
> <html lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">
As is recommended by the appendix on backwards compatibility with XHTML1.0.
You could personally delete every user-agent in the world that recognises lang
but not xml:lang, and we'll all be grateful. Otherwise we're going to need
transitional techniques.
> Personally I think this is all useless anyway, since a global declaration is
> really the responsibility of the following META tag:
>
> <meta name="language" content="en-gb" />
Why use a make-up-as-you-go along meta element when there is a standard
attribute? Why would you expect the meta element to work?
I can see the point of using <meta name="DC.Language" content="en-gb" /> or
Dublin Core in RDF/XML, only for user-agents that care about metadata and not
the content.
Why have a global version of anything that can be scoped - just use the scoped
method in the widest scope.
> The lang or xml:lang attribute should only be used when the language changes
> mid-stream as such (assuming the english META had been declared):
>
> <p class="bodyText">The governor of the Bank of England took a <span
> xml:lang="fr">laissez-faire</span> attitude to raising interest rates</p>
So it you have this there, then what do you gain by inventing a new technique?
Given that this is in addition to the HTTP content-language headers and in
addition to Dublin Core I really can't see the point of any of this.
--
Jon Hanna | Toys and books
<http://www.hackcraft.net/> | for sick children:
| <http://santa.boards.ie/>
Received on Tuesday, 2 December 2003 12:27:11 UTC