RE: {agenda} HTML WG telcon 2010-03-25: decision policy, issue status, updates from meetings, task force reports

Hi, Leif, all (I don't know what was voted for at the telcon):
Re: {agenda} HTML WG telcon 2010-03-25: decision policy, issue status, updates from meetings, task force reports
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:54:43 +0100
To: public-html-wg-announce@w3.org 
Cc: www-international@w3.org, HTMLwg WG <public-html@w3.org> 

> Sam Ruby, Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:21:21 -0400:

> Regrets: It looks I am unable to be present during the call. 

>>    d) ISSUE-88: content-language-multiple
>>         No counter proposal received
>>         http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Htmlissue88

> Comment: The agenda says 'no counter proposal received'. This is 
> roughly correct, because my alternative proposal [1] isn't all that 
> different from the I18N Wg's proposal. This is where they differ: 

> a)     MY PROP says that the the issue of setting the default language 
> via <meta> c-l should be solved by specifying that it is the *last* 
> <meta> c-l element which counts in that respect, whereas the first 
> <meta> c-l is the one to be used by servers/cms-es. This is compatible 
> with current user agents. 
ME] +1
>      I18N WG's PROP says that it is the first language tag inside the 
> <meta> c-l that counts. No UAs implement this today.

>      HTML5 says that it is the *first* <meta> that counts. The I18N 
> Wg's proposal doesn't protest against this.


ME] I do not support a W3C endorsement of two meta content elements
but I do think that, where more than one is defined, some method should be specified
for processing these.

I thus would not support restricting the number of language subtags listed in the last meta element to one
(though I see one as a possibility, for cases where there is only one language for a document).

However, again I tend to support Leif's suggestion that, 
where there are multiple languages declared in the meta content-language element,
and no language is is declared in the html lang= attribute,
the document-wide default language or whatever it is called should be set to "" (null, the empty string).

I do on the other hand support Leif's suggestion to override any language inheritance with 
multiple language declarations in the last meta content element.

 

Quoting Leif quoting Richard Ishida:


"[1] Replace the term 'document-wide default language' with the term 'Content-Language pragma language'.
"Rationale: 
"A lang attribute in the html element or an HTTP header could also define something that could be considered a document-wide default language. Restricting this term to the pragma declaration only is misleading."

 

ME] I don't have a strong opinion one way or another on this; I think html, http, meta content-language
should be used as defined for HTML4; 
however R.I.'s proposal is more in-line with current practice  --
and we do have to solve the problem of applications' not setting the language attribute in the html element
(but then they do for the body element and that is where the language is inherited from)

 

> b)    MY PROP says that it should be permitted to just place whitespace 
> inside the @content attribute of <meta> c-l, as this can solve some 
> unfortunate language inheritance effects in current user agents. This 
> is already permitted in HTML4/XHTML.


ME] +1
(However, I will have to get more browsers someday and test all these browsers myself; I've tested IE7 and IE8 and rarely look at pages in mozilla; sorry.)
Best,
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com


>    I18N WG's PROP only says that @content should contain a comma 
> separated list - and doesn't mention the whitespace option. (Actually, 
> Zi18n wg's proposal, last I checked, talks about a space separated list 
> instead of comma separated list. But this got to be an error ...!]
I support a comma-separated list.
> I support the I18N's wg's proposal over the the current spec. But would 
> support it more wholeheartedly if my viewpoints on a) and especially on 
> b) was incorporated into their proposal.

> [1] 
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/lang_versus_contentLanguage
> --