Adding language and direction metadata to RFC 9457 [I18N-ACTION-106]

All,

 

I drew an action item [1] from the W3C I18N working group to write to this
group about RFC9457 [2]. I have previously written to the ADs and the
authors individually on this topic seeking guidance.

 

A W3C specification in the Verifiable Credentials family of specs referenced
this RFC as part of a response to an I18N issue [4]. As you know, RFC9457
defines a JSON structure for replying with additional information when an
error is produced.


Our working group has been promoting the adoption of consistent best
practices for language and paragraph direction metadata. While our focus is
on the Web, we think our best practices are applicable to protocols,
formats, and APIs in general. Many of those best practices are found in our
document "Strings on the Web: Language and Direction Metadata" (aka
"string-meta") [3]. The short version of this would be: for any string data
value containing natural language text it should be possible to determine
the language and base direction associated with it, ideally using consistent
representations. 


The RFC in question does permit/encourage language negotiation using
Accept-Language and does exemplify using Content-Language to indicate the
language of the returned "problems" file. There is no provision for
multilingual files or for base paragraph direction ("string direction") or
per-string overrides.


We think RFC9457 should adopt W3C-I18N's best practices as they relate to
JSON (or XML, in the case of using that format instead). Further, we think
that, in general, document formats and protocols should be consistent with
these best practices (and of course we welcome feedback).

 

To that end, we'd like to suggest edits to the RFC to allow file- and
string-level language and direction metadata using the model set forth in
string-meta.  

 

Regards (for W3C I18N),

 

[1] https://github.com/w3c/i18n-actions/issues/106

[2] https://rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9457.html 

[3] https://www.w3.org/TR/string-meta

[4]
https://github.com/w3c/vc-bitstring-status-list/issues/140#issuecomment-1951
429248

 

 

Addison Phillips

Chair (W3C Internationalization WG)

 

Internationalization is not a feature.

It is an architecture.