XHTML 2.0 and hreflang

Hello,

I'm sorry if this is an issue already discussed months ago - I'm new to the list and could not find anything relevant in the archives. (Only postings similiar to mine, but no replies)

A) The XHTML 2.0 public working draft (May 2003) lacks the good old hreflang attribute.

Is there any reason for this? I always considered it very thoughtful of web authors to point out explicitly that the resource they linked to was turkish or french. It helped me safe a mouseclick and bandwidth because I wouldn't have understood what's written there anyway.

B) Even worse, section 12.1.3 gives a completely confusing idea of what xml:lang would be used for.

12.1.3 states that xml:lang will indicate *both* the language of the referenced document *and* that of the title-attibute.
Example:

<link title="The manual in Portuguese"
      rel="alternate"
      xml:lang="pt" 
      href="http://example.com/manual/portuguese.html"/>

Well, plain to see for everyone, the title attribute is still in English. Doesn't XML generally use xml:lang to denote the language of an element's attributes/content rather than that of some remote resource? Shouldn't the example, therefore, read:

<link title="The manual in Portuguese"
      rel="alternate"
      xml:lang="en"  <=== attributes are in english
	hreflang="pt"  <=== god old friend hreflang!
      href="http://example.com/manual/portuguese.html"/>


Please let me know the reason behind this "hreflang to xml:lang"-transformation in the XHTML draft; if there's a public document that explains it, a link would be appreciated.

Thank you!

Received on Monday, 3 November 2003 17:05:57 UTC