RE: Null change proposal for ISSUE-88 (mark II): proposed note

CE Whitehead, Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:29:55 -0400:
> Hi, Leif, all!

>> I have to say though, that the dilemma, "Choosing between 
>> Content-Language and attributes", is an oddly formulated one - I did 
>> not know that I could choose ...

> ME] Well, if we have both the html lang declaration and the meta 
> content-language declaration as options,
> authors always can choose to use one, or the other, or ignore both
> and hope that defaults will work.

They are options. But they are not meant as options for the same thing. 
Hence it is quite odd that that an best praxis guide present them on an 
equal footing. To, in addition - as I feel that Richard now does - use 
this erroneous juxtaposition as an argument for making META 
content-language illegal, makes even less sense.
 
> However, I thought that both a language specification in the html tag
> and in addition a language specification in the http header or a meta 
> Content-language element
> were both essential to good practice.

Yes. But they live in different rooms - conceptually.
 
>> In that note, I can also not find any discussion of of the main problem 
>> with Content-Language, as I see it: That it interferes with the 
>> interpretation of an empty lang=""/xml:lang="".
> 
> ME] Yes
> 
>> In a Best practise document about @lang and content-language, how will 
>> you explain to authors how they can avoid the problem that 
>> Content-Language (the HTTP headers) interferes with Gecko's 
>> interpretation of lang="" and xml:lang="", if it is not permitted to 
>> place Content-Language meta element inside the document which can be 
>> used to cancel this effect?
> ME] Agreed.  This would be a problem.
> (Content-authors mess things up and processors mess things up but I 
> think it's the w3c's job to
> specify recommendations for documents as properly as possible.)

Indeed.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Monday, 12 April 2010 12:15:08 UTC