Re: XHTML+RDFa and @lang

On 29/1/09 18:21, Shane McCarron wrote:
>
> (cc-ing the xhtml 2 working group as well)
>
> Just to keep you all in the loop:
>
> The XHTML 2 Working Group has been asked to re-introduce the lang
> attribute into XHTML family languages. Basically this is so that
> assistive technologies will correctly identify the language of content.
> It will also address some issues that arise when content is
> served up as text/html instead of application/xhtml+xml. The change in
> XHTML 1.1 will read something like:
>
>> <p>This specification also adds the <code>lang</code> attribute to the
>> I18N attribute collection as defined in <nref>XHTMLMOD</nref>. The
>> <code>lang</code> attribute is defined in <nref>HTML4</nref>. When
>> this attribute
>> and the <code>xml:lang</code> are specified on the same element, the
>> <code>xml:lang</code> takes precedence.</p>
>
>
> The plan is to recommend (suggest) that documents that wish to be
> portable specify both @lang and @xml:lang. In such documents, obviously
> the presence of @lang would have no side-effects with regard to
> XHTML+RDFa. However, it is feasible that document authors will create
> documents that do not use @xml:lang at all - relying solely upon @lang.
>
> We are not at this time proposing that this change be pushed into the
> RDFa Syntax Recommendation. However, I imagine that this will come up
> when we go to re-issue that spec. We have not examined what such a
> change would do to XHTML+RDFa - I request that the task force do so at
> its earliest convenience.

(I'm generally supportive of this, but that doesn't matter right now :)

Couple of questions -

1. What to say about cases where @lang and @xml:lang have different content?

2. Would @lang have the same rules as for http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/ ?

cheers,

Dan

Received on Thursday, 29 January 2009 17:49:29 UTC