Comment on xml:lang=""

This is a comment on
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204/#sec-lang-tag
particularly concerning the following sentence concerning xml:lang=""

"Within B, it is considered that there is no language information available, 
just as if xml:lang had not been specified on B or any of its ancestors."

I suggest "just as if" is a touch too strong, and could be better replaced by 
"similar to the case when" or somesuch.

For example

<span xml:lang="en">I used the 
attribute <span xml:lang="">xml:lang</span></span>

It would be appropriate to match the whole element, including the child when 
looking for English text. My case is more compelling when considering the 
(probably syntactically incorrect :( ) XPath expression
"*[@xml:lang='en']//*"
what I am trying to say is all descendents of any element with explicit 
xml:lang='en'. The child should match this, which is not "just as if"

<span>I used the 
attribute <span xml:lang="">xml:lang</span></span>

Thanks for your consideration

Jeremy Carroll (personal comment)

Received on Thursday, 18 March 2004 09:02:12 UTC