Re: what's the language of a document ?

On 2009/10/27 19:37, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Simon Pieters wrote:
>> This doesn't match what's specced for<meta http-equiv=content-language
>> content=foo,bar>.
>
> That's intentional, and is based on data about how people actually use
> that pragma.

There's always a way to justify inconsistent choices (be it browser 
implementations, 'data' about how people (who?) use some feature (at 
what point in time?),...). But it would be way better to be consistent.

And there is always a way to justify making choices that everybody 
except those knowing all the details of the spec don't understand. But 
it would be way better to make choices that are easy to understand (e.g. 
http-equiv actually meaning what it says, namely "equivalent to the 
corresponding HTTP header").

There are lots of cases where over time, people have come to a better 
understanding of how things work. For stuff that authors/producers 
aren't supposed to produce, I don't mind too much that HTML5 is 
hopelessly complex and inconsistent. I can live without remembering it 
all, and can tell others to avoid it. However, for stuff like the above, 
which may be used even by very consciously clean developers, creating 
inconsistencies such the above is a heavy negative legacy.

Regards,   Martin.

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Tuesday, 27 October 2009 11:09:58 UTC