Re: Usefulness of language annotations

I believe we've previously established that tools are unreliable in this
regard.

On the other hand, the author/developer/whatever-you-call-them should
know perfectly well what language they're using.

Perhaps the twitterverse is more illiterate in this regard, but how is
that a reason to cater to illiteracy?

We have a well established need for explicit lang markup at the very
least in digital publishing, especially for educational and professional
use. Imho, this use case should continue to be met by the existence of
the <lang> inline attribute, whether or not the FaceBook crowd knows how
to use it. I'm in favor of raising literacy, not bowing to its absence.

Janina

Jens O. Meiert writes:
> (I think I messed up the original email, and contemplate presenting
> the case anew shortly.)
> 
> > When you say "developer," are you speaking of content authoring?
> 
> Yes, as I see markup more in a development than in a writing realm. In
> W3C terminology, both “developer” or “author” fit the bill, however.
> 
> > What's the concern you have with existing lanb markup? Why this sudden
> > interest? What are you seeking to achieve?
> 
> My concern is that language determination should not be a
> developer/author problem, but a tool one. That it’s too costly (in
> comparison, and cumulatively) to require this of developers. And also
> unrealistic (high number and influx of HTML novices).
> 
> And so I’m looking to gauge whether we can set better expectations.
> Who should do what, and how strongly what is required of who (in terms
> of RFC 2119 [1]).
> 
> (As of this moment I think there should be a stronger push to have
> tools figure this out, and only an advisory for developers/authors to
> add markup if *critical* for their target audience.)
> 
> > > * The cost of manually marking up languages is much higher (recurring) than
> > > of determining them automatically.
> >
> > So what? A BMW costs more than a Volkswagen, clearly. Are you saying
> > there's no place in the world for BMW?
> 
> That is not a good analogy. If you wanted to stick with yours, it’s
> rather like current recommendations say, “let’s require everyone to
> buy a BMW.” (And still that metaphor would only reflect the cost
> dimension of my point, not the quality dimension.)
> 
> 
> [1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt
> 
> -- 
> Jens O. Meiert
> http://meiert.com/en/
> 
> ⚐ http://coderesponsibly.org/

-- 

Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.443.300.2200
   sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
  Email: janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup: http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair, Protocols & Formats http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
 Indie UI   http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Received on Thursday, 14 August 2014 17:33:30 UTC