[Serial] additional last call comment about xml:lang

Dear XML Query WG and XSL WG,

This is a last call comment on your Serialization document.
We are sorry that this last call comment is late, but it is
very important.

We have earlier sent comments on the Data Model and on XSLT
where we have urged better support for the inheritance of
xml:lang (or for inherited attributes in general). Without
any such support, it is extremely tedious to write a
transformation or query that adequately copies xml:lang
from the input to the output.

In internal discussion, Liam Quin suggested that
it might be more appropriate to submit our comment against
Serialization. The reason for this is that XPath/XSLT offers
reasonable support for extracting xml:lang information from
source documents into the data model. However, when serialized,
this leads in most cases to a completely unnecessary and
undesirable multiplication of xml:lang attributes on
virtually every element. Adding some support for reducing
unnecessary xml:lang attributes from the output on
serialization would be highly desirable. As I think we
have written previously, better support for xml:lang
(and maybe inherited attributes in general) was something
that was left over as 'future work' from XSLT 1.0. Your
current work is the best chance to fix this problem.

Regards,     Martin.

Received on Wednesday, 5 May 2004 08:29:17 UTC