Re: I18N feedback on Issue-88

Hi.
From: Jonas Sicking <> 
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 10:15:55 -0700
Message-ID: <AANLkTimFkj960XvAMMsqdEirubpIWRb4Wpl0lZ3OX7xx@mail.gmail.com> 
To: fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> 
Cc: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>, Addison Phillips <addison@lab126.com>, public-i18n-core@w3.org, public-html@w3.org 

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 2:21 AM, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> On 05/19/2010 02:06 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>>
>> "Addison Phillips"<addison@lab126.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> - HTML should (continue to) strongly recommend the presence of @lang
>>> (and warn in validators if it is not present)
>>
>> If validators did that, there'd be even more templates, etc., filling in a
>> placeholder value that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the
>> actual content.
>
>> In that case, I would suggest following Leif's suggestion and only
>> posting a warning about a missing lang="" if the Content-Language
>> HTTP header or <meta http-equiv> pragma is present. This is more
>> likely to catch authors who are trying to specify the language but
>> doing so wrongly, and avoid the authors who don't care.

> Wouldn't you get the same effect by warning every time the <meta
> http-equiv> pragma is present? At least if such a warning includes
> language to recommend that @lang is a better solution. IMHO validators
> should always include recommendation of what the "new correct way" is
> whenever warning about deprecated features.
Fine but also -- for the http header and the htto-equiv to remain identical --
you must warn authors whenever the http header is present.

My goal is to have both the http header and the http-equiv meta element identical -- and to leave
both elements available to composers if the latter is possible.
I have no objection to having a warning whenever the html lang= is omitted
but agree that it is also possible to have a warning only when it is omitted and one of the other language declarations is also present.

Can someone direct me to the current proposal?

(I can only find Leif's counter-proposal; and then R. I.'s hopefully dated text at:
http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Htmlissue88
as I am quite troubled by the following:
"Section 3.2.3.3: 

[4] Remove 'primary' from: 

"The lang attribute (in no namespace) specifies the primary language for the element's contents and for any of the element's attributes that contain text. Its value must be a valid BCP 47 language code, or the empty string. [BCP47]" 

"Rationale: 

"Only one language can be declared at a time.)

> UPDATE: The i18n WG will not press this issue further. ") 
From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> 
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 20:40:23 +0200

> 4. If the focus is on getting authors to use @lang, then it is better 
> to focus on the cases when something *other* than lang - namely 
> Content-Language -takes control over the language. And this, is the 
> essence of my proposal: if html@lang is used (on the root element) then 
> there never is any warning [unless the syntax of Content-Language is 
> incorrect].
I agree with Leif's proposal as it is worded here; however I do not agree that 
en, fr or some such should necessarily fill the html lang attribute under the wg/w3c's proposal
since only a single language tag would be chosen for the html lang attribute?
That is, if there were multiple values specified, then the tag could not be made into a valid text-processing language and used in the html lang attribute I do not think.
Thus although I have not seen the current version of the proposal I do not think it is quite so bad as Leif insists.

But I do need to see the updated proposal!


Best,

C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com 
> Jonas