Re: [XHTML2] CITELANG, TITLELANG attributes

>> it wasn't really a link, but just a translation of a Dutch poem, 
>> but there isn't a way to say that the original poem was written in 
>> Dutch.
> 
> If I understand you correctly, you were looking for a way to say such
> a thing in markup, without necessarily pointing to the original in 
> any way. While this might be relevant in some situations - it can be 
> useful to know that some text has been translated from a particular 
> language, since this may help to understand some odd formulations - 
> it's hardly useable to programs at the present level of the state of 
> art. And to humans, it can be expressed in prose after or before the 
> quotation.

You are pointing using the CITE attribute, which is currently only
useful for machine processing I assume or for extraction using CSS
and/or JavaScript. Although the latter means you actually want to have
element, not an attribute.

Since there also is a HREFLANG and HREFTYPE attribute to say something
about the link in your document, I thought it would be useful to say
something about the resource.

Someone might have published a PNG and you have the text on your page
and markup like:

  <blockquote cite="http://example.org/reports/2004/content.png"
              citetype="image/png"
  >
   ...
  </blockquote>

Or you have translated a poem, which looks like (same example as given
before only more clear, I hope):

  <blockquote cite="http://example.org/poems/234.nl" citelang="nl">
  <!-- English translation -->
   ...
  </blockquote>

In the end, it would probably be more useful to use the CITE element
itself, although I'm not sure how the markup would look like in both
BLOCKQUOTE and QUOTE.

Perhaps:

  <blockquote>
   <p>...</p>
   <p>...</p>
   <cite href="http://example.org/poems/34" hreflang="nl">...</cite>
  </blockquote>

... but I think this is rather ugly since it mixes both inline (CITE)
and block level (P) elements within the same container. And while it is
mostly desired to be rendered within BLOCKQUOTE, it isn't part of the quote.

With QUOTE, as in inline quotations, this is probably easier, since you
don't want to include the resource within the element there. Although it
would be nice if there was a way to connect the quote with the resource.
Perhaps (don't mind the used names):

  <p>
   <cite cite="#foo" href="http://example.org/poems/2">...</cite>
   ...
   <quote id="foo">...</quote>
   ...
  </p>


>>> Irrespectively of this, I don't think a hreflang or a citelang 
>>> attribute is needed much. Your example refers to a document via 
>>> HTTP, and presumably to an HTML document; this means that one can
>>> use both the Content-Language header and <html xml:lang="nl"> if
>>> desired.
>> 
>> How can I show that to someone who reads my page?
> 
> You don't; it's not a property of your page but of the referred 
> document.

So you consider HREFLANG as not useful? And HREFTYPE? And TYPE of
embedding attributes module? Since TYPE only says something about the
linked resource (SRC).

Or am I generalizing too much?


> Yes, but if such information is relevant, it is probably relevant 
> independently of rendering style, i.e. it should be expressed using 
> actual content, not "generated content".

Agreed. However, we need new elements for that, otherwise people won't
know how to handle it.


> If there is a particular reason to refer to a particular version of a
> document, when it exists in different versions selectable by content
> negotiation, then an author should simply link to the document using
> a language-specific URL. Surely the versions should have their own 
> URLs as well. One might be tempted into thinking that hreflang="..." 
> is more robust since the method of naming the different variants 
> might change in future, so that http://example.org/content.html.fr 
> might become http://example.org/content?language=fr for example. But 
> cool URIs don't change*), and for uncool URIs, the problem exists no 
> matter what we do with language selection.

Fair point. I think I agree with this, although I like the fact that you 
can point people to exactly the same universal URI (as in: not 
specific), while giving the different content when they select that 
using an UA menu based on LINK elements for example.

This way everyone will keep pointing towards:

  http://example.org/

Instead of having multiple links to basically "the same" document (this 
is probably thin ice, since it isn't really "the same" document; maybe I 
need to understand that part better :-)):

  http://example.org/home.nl.xht
  http://example.org/home.ru.htm


-- 
  Anne van Kesteren
  <http://annevankesteren.nl/>

Received on Wednesday, 28 July 2004 11:13:59 UTC