Re: AW: XHTML 2.0 and hreflang

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Hi Oskar, dear list members,


Am Montag, 10. November 2003 22:59 schrieb Oskar Welzl:
> Christian,
>
> > > A) The XHTML 2.0 public working draft (May 2003) lacks the good old
> > > hreflang attribute.
> >
> > I agree with you.
> > I miss that, too.
>
> thx.
>
> > I "demand" (read: suggest ;-) to keep the hreflang attribute,
> > make it part of
> > the hypertext attribute collection and additionally allow it to contain
> > multiple values, a language list, because the URI reference in
> > context could
> > be a URI pointing on a negotiating resource.
>
> how do you expect negotiation to take place? would that be between the
> *user agent* and the negotiating resource rather than between the linking
> document and this resource? we wouldnt need a language list for that.
You maybe need, see below.

> i can see a point in a language list for informational purposes:
> the meaning of hreflang="de en fr" would be something like "the remote
> resource contains information in english, german and french" or "the remote
> resource is available in verious languages, such as english, german and
> french". in fact, only recently i was looking for a way to express that in
> XHTML 1.0; even though i would have needed this language list myself, i'm
> not sure wether or not we should wish for it: it's not "XMLish"; xml:lang
> doesn't work that way, so i think hreflang shouldn't, either.

I'd say, hreflang="de en fr" means the resource exists in three variants, 
german, english and french.
The user agent then may choose to modify it's Accept-Language header 
accordingly.


hreflang describes the language of a resource. The resource might exist in 
multiple variants with different languages.
That's what makes it different from xml:lang.
While in <span xml:lang="de">Guten Tag</span> you can exactly say that it's 
german, for the resource http://www.hujer.com/start you can't, because that 
document is english or german depending on your user agent's Accept-Language 
header in its http request.
I do not want to include the language name in the canonical URI because I want 
to keep it stable and the file name scheme might change. Also, I want the 
canonical URI to be international. Even for internal references I prefer to 
always use the canonical URI.
But if the user chooses to override the user agent's settings by willingly 
choosing the German language variant, I'd like the German variants to include 
hreflang="de, en;q=0.8" in their links, telling the server that the German 
resource is preferred, and only if it doesn't exist, the English one should 
be chosen.

The hreflang attribute value should imho follow the same scheme HTTP/1.1 
defines the Accept-Language header.


Bye
- -- 
ITCQIS GmbH
Christian Wolfgang Hujer
Geschäftsführender Gesellschafter (Shareholding CEO)
Telefon: +49  (0)89  27 37 04 37
Telefax: +49  (0)89  27 37 04 39
E-Mail: Christian.Hujer@itcqis.com
WWW: http://www.itcqis.com/
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Received on Tuesday, 11 November 2003 03:34:21 UTC