RE: Can we have @lang back in XHTML Family?

Hi,

This topic was discussed last week in the i18n WG call, and the group
formally supports adding the lang attribute to the XHTML family as a stopgap
means to enable language information to be recognised by html processors.
http://www.w3.org/2009/01/28-core-minutes.html#item07

We would also like to enlist the support of the BPWG and the XHTML WGs to
propose to the HTML5 WG that their spec recognise xml:lang as equivalent to
lang, so that eventually XHTML can be written with a single language
attribute, ie. xml:lang, and still be recognised by html processors. Would
your groups support this?

RI

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Pemberton [mailto:steven.pemberton@cwi.nl]
> Sent: 28 January 2009 14:42
> To: Richard Ishida; 'Dominique Hazael-Massieux'; public-xhtml2@w3.org;
> public-i18n-core@w3.org
> Cc: fd@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Can we have @lang back in XHTML Family?
> 
> Hi Richard,
> 
> This reply from you rings a bell that you had said that you would suggest
> this to the HTML5 group. I think you speak a lot of sense, and that it
> would be good if we could move to a future where browsers recognised
> both
> lang and xml:lang.
> 
> Still, in the short term, it looks like we do need lang to be available
> for dual-purposing existing documents.
> 
> Steven
> 
> 
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:33:54 +0100, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> >
> > I'm copying in the i18n WG to this thread.
> >
> > I18n folks:  See the following thread, where Dom proposes the
> > introduction
> > of the lang attribute to XHTML in addition to xml:lang, so that when
> > people
> > serve XHTML as text/html the language information is available.
> >
> > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/2009Jan/0049.html
> >
> > I was sure I had written something along these lines and sent to the
> > html5
> > WG, but I don't seem to be able to find it.  We certainly had some
> > discussion of it in the i18n WG a while back.
> >
> > I hear many complaints from authors using XHTML about having to declare
> > language twice, once with lang and once with xml:lang for XHTML 1.0, and
> > I
> > must say that I also find it burdensome myself.  I encourage people to
> > persevere because agents that process text/html don't recognise
xml:lang,
> > but agents that process the file as XML (eg. using XSLT) only recognise
> > xml:lang.
> >
> > I would very much like to reach a situation where an author could just
> > use
> > one or other of these attributes, and achieve the desired result.
> >
> > I was originally thinking, however, that we should ask the HTML5 people
> > to
> > write their spec such that future processors of text/html would
recognise
> > both lang and xml:lang as equivalent.  That way it wouldn't be necessary
> > for
> > the XHTML specs to change, and authors of XHTML would be able to use
> just
> > xml:lang, rather than both attributes.
> >
> > The idea that it might be possible to introduce lang to XHTML 1.1 etc
was
> > interesting, but I think that the problem would be that, if people don't
> > continue to use both attributes, xml processors would have to also be
> > changed to recognise that lang is equivalent to xml:lang (eg. so that
the
> > XPath lang() function would still work in XSLT or XQuery).  In fact, I
> > think
> > that that would ultimately mean changing the XML spec, and the
> > Canonicalisation spec, XML Schema, etc.  I think that many people would
> > only
> > use lang when writing XHTML, and then we'd have the opposite problem
> from
> > the one we're trying to fix, ie. that XHTML doesn't work as it should as
> > XML.
> >
> > I can't say what level of acceptance the idea would have with the HTML5
> > folks, but it seems to me that moving text/html processors to accept
> > xml:lang as equivalent to lang would be more effective, and perhaps
> > easier.
> >
> > Ok, so what am I missing?
> >
> > RI
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ============
> > Richard Ishida
> > Internationalization Lead
> > W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
> >
> > http://www.w3.org/International/
> > http://rishida.net/
> >
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Dominique Hazael-Massieux [mailto:dom@w3.org]
> >> Sent: 21 January 2009 08:24
> >> To: public-xhtml2@w3.org
> >> Cc: ishida@w3.org; fd@w3.org
> >> Subject: Can we have @lang back in XHTML Family?
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> The to-be-published version of the XHTML Media Types note allows for
> any
> >> XHTML Family document to be served as text/html:
> >>   http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2009/ED-xhtml-media-types-20090116/
> >>
> >> But as was discussed in this very list [1], this is problematic since
> >> the lang attribute (the only one interpreted as a language annotation
on
> >> documents served as text/html) is not allowed by the XHTML DTDs (but
> the
> >> XHTML 1.0 one).
> >>
> >> Could the lang attribute be added to the relevant DTDs so as to enable
> >> properly lang-marked up XHTML documents to be served as text/html?
> >>
> >> FWIW, I'm fairly confident I could get formal support from the Mobile
> >> Web Best Practices Working Group on this proposal if this is of any
> >> help, since this impacts negatively on the deployment of their mobileOK
> >> specification.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> Dom
> >>
> >> 1. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/2008Mar/0086.html
> >
> >

Received on Monday, 2 February 2009 18:17:18 UTC