[Bug 14709] lang tag validation is insufficiently specified

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=14709

Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                URL|                            |http://dev.w3.org/html5/spe
                   |                            |c/elements#the-lang-and-xml
                   |                            |:lang-attributes
                 CC|                            |xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-i
                   |                            |ua.no

--- Comment #2 from Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> 2011-11-07 00:31:11 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #1)
> Another way to look at this problem is "should ISO 639-3 (three-letter) codes
> be allowed when the BCP47 tag for a given language is the two-letter ISO 639-1
> code?"

Due to the fact that the BCP47 tag is "my", there can be no doubt that it is
invalid to use lang="mya".

However, I think  what you ask,  is whether it would be against HTML5 for the
screenreader to report the 3-letter tag "mya" as Burmese when the valid BCP47
tag for Burmese is "my". 

The spec seems to say that "mya" should be reported as "mya" and not as
"Burmese".  On the other side, the spec does not seem to have considered what
to do in a case such as "mya".

If I read you correctly, you want HTML5 to explicitly forbid that "mya" is
treated like a synonym for "my". And this might make sense.

When it comes to CSS, then it is clear that it is not synonymous - just
consider that  div:lang(mya){} would not select <div lang="my">. But when it
comes to screenreaders and OpenType APIs etc, then this might not be as clear.

BCP47 itself has its own extension points, and in order that extensions happens
in BCP47 and not elsewhere etc, it might make sense to say that codes that are
not part of BCP47 should not be treated as synonyms of codes that *are* part of
BCP47. Or something like that.

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Received on Monday, 7 November 2011 00:33:20 UTC