RE: [CSS21][css3-namespace][css3-page][css3-selectors][css3-content] Unicode Normalization

> From: public-i18n-core-request@w3.org [mailto:public-i18n-core-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd)
> Sent: 05 February 2009 16:23
 
> > That identifiers
> > aren't just binary numbers but have some mnemonic textual interpretation
> > is just a bonus for convenience. We shouldn't get carried away thinking
> > that natural language expression is the primary point of having e.g.
> > HTML ids.
> 
> No, of course it's not the /primary/ point, but it is a very
> important point none the less.  Suppose, for example, I were
> Vietnamese, and wanted to differentiate snakes from
> other reptiles; would it be unreasonable of me to want to
> be able to write <span class="rắn"> ... </span> wherever
> a snake occurred in the text, and to have that class match
> the corresponding CSS rule for ".rắn {}", even if the CSS
> had been created using a different authoring system that
> generated a different internal representation for "rắn" ?


Henri, I think that if we follow your argument we should expect to see far more ids such as id1, id2, id3, or aa, ab, ac... etc.  But actually people tend to regularly use id and class names that make some sense, are easy to remember, and relate to the topic at hand.  Well, if you speak and think in excellent English there's no big deal with codepoint for codepoint comparison.  But if you speak and think in Vietnamese, Burmese, Khmer, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Sinhala, Tlįchǫ Yatìi, Dënesųłįne, Dene Zhatié–Shihgot’ine, Gwich’in, Dɛnɛsųłįnɛ, Igbo, Yoruba, Arabic, Urdu, Azeri, Tibetan, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Serbian, etc. etc. and especially if your content is in that language, then it wouldn't be so surprising that you would want to write class names and ids in that language too, and I think we need to investigate what is needed to support that.

RI

Received on Thursday, 5 February 2009 17:23:57 UTC