RE: ISSUE-88 / Re: what's the language of a document ?

Issue-88 was discussed last night at the i18n telecon.  These are our
current thoughts about the change proposal at
http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Htmlissue88

The i18n WG is now satisfied with regard to proposals [1], [4] and [5] and
thanks the editor for the changes made to the specification.

There are two items remaining.

[[
[3] Change:
"For meta elements with an http-equiv attribute in the Content Language
state, the content attribute must have a value consisting of a valid BCP 47
language code. [BCP47]"
to
"For meta elements with an http-equiv attribute in the Content Language
state, the content attribute must have a value consisting of one or more
valid BCP 47 language codes, separated by commas. [BCP47]"
]]

Since the algorithm just above this text now allows for treatment of a
comma-separated list of values in determining the pragma-set default
language, we suspect that it might be an oversight that this text wasn't
changed.


[[
[2] Add an additional note just before the numbered list in the section
about Content language state, with the following text:

"Note: Declarations in the HTTP header and the Content Language pragma are
metadata, referring to the document as a whole and expressing the expected
language or languages of the audience of the document. On the other hand, a
language attribute on an element describes the actual language used in the
range of content bounded by that element (and so values are limited to a
single language at a time)."

Rationale: To clarify why the HTTP and pragma declarations are different
when it comes to values, and how they should be used. This is a constant
source of confusion.
]]

On balance, we would still prefer to see a note of this kind in the spec, if
the editor agrees.


For the i18n WG,
RI


============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/

Received on Thursday, 1 April 2010 19:27:41 UTC