[Bug 14709] lang tag validation is insufficiently specified

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

--- Comment #13 from Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> 2011-11-07 20:31:08 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.

Actually, the phrase "distinct from all other languages" should in principle be
clear. To be even more clear, it could say "distinct from _ANY_ other _LANGUAGE
REPRESENTED IN THE BCP47 SUBTAG REGISTRY_.

>   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.

Yes. But I think the main point with the "For the purposes of round-tripping"
sentence, is to express that unknown tags _should be passed_ at all. The
alternative which the  SHOULD thus seeks to demote, is the possibilithy that of
not passing it at all.

In principle the sentence could be modified to say "SHOULD pass through unknown
tags, and if they are passed, they MUST be passed through as unmodified". (That
is: "Burmese" or "mya" MUST NOT be "normalized" to "my" before it is passed
through.)

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Received on Monday, 7 November 2011 20:31:10 UTC