RE: Problem with LANG keyword

The problem is the overhead necessary to add the LANG tag in all places. If you look at Israeli sites you will see a lot of text in English.

This is because English is an official language in Israel, many people do not like to translate expressions from English to Hebrew because everyone knows the English words and not the Hebrew translation.

Another reason is that most sites are trying to be bi-lingual so that both English and Hebrew readers will find their way.

So, if W3C recommendations will include the need to add LANG attribute whenever you use English instead of Hebrew, we will get a very strong negative response. People will say (and they are right) that the Latin text inside a Hebrew HTML script is obviously in English. So, if it's obvious and technically possible to distinguish between Hebrew and English in automatic means without the need to add LANG attribute then this is the correct way to do so.

What is your opinion?
Reuven Nisser
Ofek Liyladenu

-----Original Message-----
From: www-html-request@w3.org [mailto:www-html-request@w3.org]On Behalf
Of Chris Moschini
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 3:32 PM
To: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: Problem with LANG keyword

That is your solution. <html lang="lang1,lang2,lang3"> violates the purpose of the lang attribute, which is to say what one language is inside that tag. If you change languages, you simply add another tag - as Christoph has done with the samp tag above.

It is clear to both computer and human, and adds little extra to the markup. Why is this solution a problem for you?

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 09:50:23 UTC