Re: Can we have @lang back in XHTML Family?

Richard,

The XHTML2 WG strongly supports this.

Many thanks.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton
For the XHTML2 WG


On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:17:21 +0100, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> This topic was discussed last week in the i18n WG call, and the group
> formally supports adding the lang attribute to the XHTML family as a  
> stopgap
> means to enable language information to be recognised by html processors.
> http://www.w3.org/2009/01/28-core-minutes.html#item07
>
> We would also like to enlist the support of the BPWG and the XHTML WGs to
> propose to the HTML5 WG that their spec recognise xml:lang as equivalent  
> to
> lang, so that eventually XHTML can be written with a single language
> attribute, ie. xml:lang, and still be recognised by html processors.  
> Would
> your groups support this?
>
> RI
>
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> Internationalization Lead
> W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
>
> http://www.w3.org/International/
> http://rishida.net/
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Steven Pemberton [mailto:steven.pemberton@cwi.nl]
>> Sent: 28 January 2009 14:42
>> To: Richard Ishida; 'Dominique Hazael-Massieux'; public-xhtml2@w3.org;
>> public-i18n-core@w3.org
>> Cc: fd@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: Can we have @lang back in XHTML Family?
>>
>> Hi Richard,
>>
>> This reply from you rings a bell that you had said that you would  
>> suggest
>> this to the HTML5 group. I think you speak a lot of sense, and that it
>> would be good if we could move to a future where browsers recognised
>> both
>> lang and xml:lang.
>>
>> Still, in the short term, it looks like we do need lang to be available
>> for dual-purposing existing documents.
>>
>> Steven
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:33:54 +0100, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>  
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > I'm copying in the i18n WG to this thread.
>> >
>> > I18n folks:  See the following thread, where Dom proposes the
>> > introduction
>> > of the lang attribute to XHTML in addition to xml:lang, so that when
>> > people
>> > serve XHTML as text/html the language information is available.
>> >
>> > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/2009Jan/0049.html
>> >
>> > I was sure I had written something along these lines and sent to the
>> > html5
>> > WG, but I don't seem to be able to find it.  We certainly had some
>> > discussion of it in the i18n WG a while back.
>> >
>> > I hear many complaints from authors using XHTML about having to  
>> declare
>> > language twice, once with lang and once with xml:lang for XHTML 1.0,  
>> and
>> > I
>> > must say that I also find it burdensome myself.  I encourage people to
>> > persevere because agents that process text/html don't recognise
> xml:lang,
>> > but agents that process the file as XML (eg. using XSLT) only  
>> recognise
>> > xml:lang.
>> >
>> > I would very much like to reach a situation where an author could just
>> > use
>> > one or other of these attributes, and achieve the desired result.
>> >
>> > I was originally thinking, however, that we should ask the HTML5  
>> people
>> > to
>> > write their spec such that future processors of text/html would
> recognise
>> > both lang and xml:lang as equivalent.  That way it wouldn't be  
>> necessary
>> > for
>> > the XHTML specs to change, and authors of XHTML would be able to use
>> just
>> > xml:lang, rather than both attributes.
>> >
>> > The idea that it might be possible to introduce lang to XHTML 1.1 etc
> was
>> > interesting, but I think that the problem would be that, if people  
>> don't
>> > continue to use both attributes, xml processors would have to also be
>> > changed to recognise that lang is equivalent to xml:lang (eg. so that
> the
>> > XPath lang() function would still work in XSLT or XQuery).  In fact, I
>> > think
>> > that that would ultimately mean changing the XML spec, and the
>> > Canonicalisation spec, XML Schema, etc.  I think that many people  
>> would
>> > only
>> > use lang when writing XHTML, and then we'd have the opposite problem
>> from
>> > the one we're trying to fix, ie. that XHTML doesn't work as it should  
>> as
>> > XML.
>> >
>> > I can't say what level of acceptance the idea would have with the  
>> HTML5
>> > folks, but it seems to me that moving text/html processors to accept
>> > xml:lang as equivalent to lang would be more effective, and perhaps
>> > easier.
>> >
>> > Ok, so what am I missing?
>> >
>> > RI
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ============
>> > Richard Ishida
>> > Internationalization Lead
>> > W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
>> >
>> > http://www.w3.org/International/
>> > http://rishida.net/
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> -----Original Message-----
>> >> From: Dominique Hazael-Massieux [mailto:dom@w3.org]
>> >> Sent: 21 January 2009 08:24
>> >> To: public-xhtml2@w3.org
>> >> Cc: ishida@w3.org; fd@w3.org
>> >> Subject: Can we have @lang back in XHTML Family?
>> >>
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> The to-be-published version of the XHTML Media Types note allows for
>> any
>> >> XHTML Family document to be served as text/html:
>> >>   http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2009/ED-xhtml-media-types-20090116/
>> >>
>> >> But as was discussed in this very list [1], this is problematic since
>> >> the lang attribute (the only one interpreted as a language annotation
> on
>> >> documents served as text/html) is not allowed by the XHTML DTDs (but
>> the
>> >> XHTML 1.0 one).
>> >>
>> >> Could the lang attribute be added to the relevant DTDs so as to  
>> enable
>> >> properly lang-marked up XHTML documents to be served as text/html?
>> >>
>> >> FWIW, I'm fairly confident I could get formal support from the Mobile
>> >> Web Best Practices Working Group on this proposal if this is of any
>> >> help, since this impacts negatively on the deployment of their  
>> mobileOK
>> >> specification.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> Dom
>> >>
>> >> 1.  
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/2008Mar/0086.html
>> >
>> >
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 4 February 2009 15:43:05 UTC