lang attribute in XHTML, mobileOK

Hi BPWG,

As you may remember, in the statistics I ran a few months ago on where
most sites checked with the W3C mobileOK checker failed, validation to
XHTML Basic was the first cause of failure, and among those, the
non-validity of the "lang" attribute in XHTML Basic was the first cause
of single-error validation problems [1].

Indeed, while the lang attribute is only allowed in XHTML 1.0, its usage
is more or less required to annotate the language of content in any
XHTML served as text/html [2].

As the XHTML2 Working Group is about to officially relax the rules on
serving XHTML as text/html, I alerted them about this problem with the
lang attribute, and they say they might consider adding that attribute
in other versions of XHTML through the W3C Edited Recommendation
process:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/2009Jan/0062.html

Part of their assessment includes potential support from the MWBPWG, and
possibly some assistance as well - although it's not clear what kind of
assistance they would need at this point.

Could we confirm officially next week that the BPWG would support having
the lang attribute added to the general XHTML Family DTDs, and thus
making it easier to pass the validation test of mobileOK?

Jo/Dan, could you add this to agenda for next week?

Thanks,

Dom

1. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-bpwg/2008Mar/0009.html
2. http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/#ri20040429.092928424

Received on Wednesday, 21 January 2009 16:17:01 UTC