Re: Internationalized CLASS attributes

You, Martin Bryan, wrote:
++ 
++ At 20:22 16/10/96 +0100, Bert Bos wrote:
++ 
++ >The next version of HTML will have a CLASS attribute on (nearly) all
++ >elements, as described in several documents ([1], [2], [3], [4]). The
++ >intention is to allow authors to attach semantic information to
++ >element
++ ...
++ 
++ >So it appears that case-conversions are language dependent. That's
++ >why, for example, there is setlocale() in POSIX. But is it practical
++ >to make the case rules for CLASS dependent on the language? Where
++ >would you get the language from?
++ >
++ >Or do we change the interpretation of CLASS, and say that it is just a
++ >code (class=xyz12, class=p-89x), that doesn't have to be
++ >human-readable? In that case ASCII is all we need.
++ >
++ >What do people think?
++ 
++ There is another side to this problem as well. Suppose I put 
++ class=name as an attribute and a Frenchman puts class=nom.
++ Sematically these are the same, but there is no way that case conversion
++ will help to determine this.
++ 
++ What we really need is something, like the RFCs relating to REV and REL,
++ which suggest a set of useful class names that could be applied by anyone,
++ irrespective of their country of origin. Admittedly most people would not
++ then be able to use their native language to name such transportable
++ classes, but the up-side would be that they would be able to identify
++ information of the class they require without having to search for all the
++ possible names for the class.

Indeed. Having a uniform set of names is in my opinion more useful
than using class names in a native language. (One can always do
that for author-defined classes). After all, the element and 
attribute names are in English too, aren't they?



Abigail

Received on Thursday, 17 October 1996 12:38:55 UTC