Tests identified for Authoring techniques for XHTML & HTML I18N: specifying the language of content 1.0

Many thanks to Richard for helping me with this & to Tex who offered help which I am sure I will take up in the future...

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USER AGENT TESTS: AUTHORING TECHNIQUES FOR XHTML & HTML INTERNATIONALIZATION: SPECIFYING THE LANGUAGE OF CONTENT 1.0
http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html



Purpose/audience

To assess I18N support of user agents.


Tests required:

1.  Declare language in http content-language and see if picked up by font change or :lang *** or voice browsers (2nd priority test) (copy this in other test descriptions)
2.  Declare language in meta content-language and see if picked up by font change or :lang
3.  Declare language in html tag and see if picked up by font change or :lang
4.  Declare different language in html tag and http content-language and see which picked up by font change or :lang
5.  Declare multiple languages in http content-language and see what happens wrt processing
6.  Declare one language in html and another in para using lang and check result for font change and :lang; do this for text/html
7.  Declare one language in html and another in para using xml:lang and check result for font change and :lang do this for application/xml+xhtml

Tests we already have:

8:  Test whether zh-hans and zh-hant work
    http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-cjk-fonts.html

9.  Test whether hreflang + CSS produce stuff in brackets etc.
    http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-hreflang-style-1.html

10. Test whether UA does something with link elements
    http://www.w3.org/International/tests/sec-link



Techniques & related tests:

Always declare the default text processing language of the page in the html tag, unless there are more than one primary languages.
- Test 3
===============

Consider using a Content-Language declaration in the HTTP header or a meta tag to declare metadata about the language of a document.
- Test 1, 2, 5
===============

Do not use Content-Language to declare the text processing language, and do not use language attributes to declare the document language metadata.
 - Tests 1,2,3
===============

Do not declare the language of a document in the body tag.
- No test required - just common sense
===============

Decide whether you want to declare a single language in the html tag, or leave it undefined.
- No test needed
===============

Try to divide the document at the highest possible level, and declare the appropriate languages in those blocks.
- No test needed
===============

If you are using Content-Language to indicate the document language metadata, provide a comma-separated list of all primary language tags.
- use for metadata rather than processing!
===============

Use the lang and/or xml:lang attributes around text to indicate any changes in language.
- Test 6, 7
===============

For HTML use the lang attribute only, for XHTML 1.0 served as text/html use the lang and xml:lang attributes, and for XHTML served as XML use the xml:lang attribute only.
- Test 6 & 7
===============

Follow the guidelines in RFC3066 for language attribute values.

- no test needed

===============
Use the two-letter ISO 639 codes for the language code where there are both 2- and 3-letter codes.

- no test needed

===============

Consider using the codes zh-Hans and zh-Hant to refer to Simplified and Traditional Chinese, respectively.
- Test 8
- need another test to cope with UAs like Opera
===============

Consider using the hreflang attribute on the a element when pointing to a resource in another language, and using CSS to indicate the language.
- Test 9
===============

If using CSS to generate a language marker from the hreflang attribute, do not use flag icons to indicate languages.
- no test needed
===============

Consider using the link element to point to localized versions of a document.
- Test 10
===============

 


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Received on Wednesday, 15 September 2004 15:29:12 UTC