[Bug 14709] lang tag validation is insufficiently specified

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

--- Comment #12 from Glenn Adams <glenn@skynav.com> 2011-11-07 19:10:54 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #11)
> I think the issue is that this text (quoted in comment 0):
> 
>   If the resulting value is not a recognized language tag, then
>   it must be treated as an unknown language having the given
>   language tag, distinct from all other languages. For the
>   purposes of round-tripping or communicating with other services
>   that expect language tags, user agents should pass unknown
>   language tags through unmodified.
> 
> has a "must" statement and a "should" statement that contradict each other.  If
> the user agent passes the unknown language tag through unmodified (following
> the "should" in the second sentence) to a system that uses a different language
> tag mechanism, then that's effectively not treating the language tag as unknown
> (violating the "must" in the first sentence) and implicitly allowing this
> alternative language tagging mechanism to be used in HTML in contexts where it
> will be passed through to, say, OpenType's different language tagging
> mechanism.

Good point. And, in this light, the "fuzziness" John mentions becomes apparent.
Both "recognized" and "unknown" are not properly scoped. And I see how this
language could be read as sanctioning another class of language tag formats.

Perhaps the above cited text should be rewritten as:

<blockquote>
If the resulting value is non-empty and is not a (syntactically and
semantically)
valid BCP47 language tag, then the attribute must be ignored for the
purpose of determining the element's language.
</blockquote>

And the screen reader example removed.

-- 
Configure bugmail: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.

Received on Monday, 7 November 2011 19:11:02 UTC