Re: Language Standards

Hi Coralie,

I thought I'd place the proposal and solutions to potential problems before
you. Your position is understandable, however, though disappointing. Do let
me know if you or anyone decides to change their mind in the future.

Cheers,
Varun


On Mon, 20 Apr 2020 at 05:29, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:

> Dear Varun,
>
> > On 17 Apr 2020, at 23:31 , Varun Varada <varuncvarada@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Coralie,
> >
> > I was actually proposing 2 independent things:
> >       • Convert the W3C website to en-GB-oxendict (Oxford English, the
> same variety used by almost every international organization such as the
> UN, ISO, BIPM, etc.). The script I mentioned would just need to be run on a
> website root page, and it would find all child pages and replace the
> instances of the text from those. It would know not to change the CSS,
> because it would parse the pages as HTML before modifying them. This is
> what Wikipedia uses in order to change the content of their articles to a
> specific English variety. It seems like the W3C's website is primarily
> static content, so it's quite straightforward to do so.
> >       • Secondly and independently, I was also proposing modifying the
> standards to make the en-GB-oxendict spelling the canonical one and allow
> the current en-US spelling side-by-side for backwards compatibility
> purposes for some amount of time. It seems like the number of CSS, HTML,
> SVG, etc. attributes, tags, and keywords that would need to change are
> merely a handful, seeing as more than 90% of the web uses HTML5 and the
> number of keywords themselves which have alternative spellings are few. As
> for the implementation of these, it's actually quite straightforward to
> implement them, since I contribute to Chromium (the browser that Chrome and
> the new Microsoft Edge are based on), which accounts for more than about
> 70% of all web browsers in current use. Regardless, even for the other
> browsers, implementing the new spec would be relatively trivial as it would
> be merely a few keyword changes in the code.
> > It sounds like the amount of effort this would involve is the primary
> concern, which is why I was bringing up the tools with which this can be
> accomplished with relatively little effort. Let me know your thoughts.
>
> I continue to stand by the thoughts I shared Friday.
>
> With kind regards,
> Coralie
>
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Varun
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 17 Apr 2020 at 08:19, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:
> > Dear Varun
> >
> > > On 17 Apr 2020, at 01:17 , Varun Varada <varuncvarada@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Coralie,
> > >
> > > Ah, it sounds like there are quite a few associated legacy costs, but
> that it's a matter of effort at the end of the day. This can be easily
> solved, however. There is a script that converts articles/websites between
> the varieties of English that can take care of this with relatively no
> effort. Wikipedia uses this tool regularly to maintain its articles in a
> certain English variety.
> > >
> > > Would you be opposed to exploring this option?
> >
> > You submitted an interesting proposal.
> >
> > I ran it by the people we are working with this year to redesign a
> subset of the W3C Website.
> >
> > We concur that changing locale between US and UK (or other) English
> would be challenging. For example in the case of CSS we would not want to
> localise "color" to "colour" since that is not valid in CSS. Similar
> examples would probably occur all across W3C content, including pages that
> re-use W3C content elsewhere (e.g. documentation sites, online training,
> other references sites, etc.)
> >
> > Using US English has been part of the website governance for W3C since
> 1994. I think most people would accept that. If we can't change it for
> specs like CSS so why do so for web content.
> >
> > At the personal level, I’ll note that I make a conscious effort to use
> en-US when I write for the W3C site, while I’ve been taught en-GB (English
> is not my first language) and it’s the locale I use naturally and am happy
> to revert to when I use English elsewhere.
> >
> > With kind regards,
> > Coralie
> >
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Varun
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, 8 Apr 2020 at 04:23, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:
> > > Hello Varun,
> > >
> > > > On 6 Apr 2020, at 22:38 , Varun Varada <varuncvarada@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I've noticed that the W3C uses US English not only on its website,
> but in its technical standards as well (e.g., "color" as a CSS property and
> "bgcolor" as an HTML attribute). Most of the rest of the world uses
> Commonwealth English, and the international community uses Oxford English
> (i.e., Oxford spelling) or British English almost exclusively, such as the
> UN, the IEC, the BIPM, CERN (the WWW's birthplace), etc. Seeing as the W3C
> is purported to be an open and international organization, it seems quite
> partial to use US English which is really only used in the US. Why is this
> the case? And can it be changed to make the organization more inclusive?
> > >
> > > It is a convention that was adopted 25 years ago at the start of the
> Consortium.
> > > While I understand your concern, I would find this hard to change.
> > >
> > > With kind regards,
> > > Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Marketing & Communications
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > > Varun
>
> --
> Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Marketing & Communications -  https://www.w3.org
> mailto:coralie@w3.org +337 810 795 22 https://www.w3.org/People/Coralie/
>
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