Re: XHTML: Suggestion to add a attribute for multi language documents

> > It works with a handful of specialized browsers. The problem is that
> > the vast majority of pages don't do language markup, or do it _wrong_,
> > so even the small number of people using those browsers don't benefit
> > much. This in turn means that there's little motivation to authors to
> > use language markup.
>
> The main problem is that page authors don't see what they're marking up.
> For something to be used in a correct manner, authors need to be able to
> notice that something is wrong.
>
> There is also a role for browser vendors to play here, not just for
> authoring tools. I'd say *especially* for browser vendors, as their
> products are usually the main tool documents are authored with. The
> speech thing in Opera is a nice example of this, it may seem a bit silly
> but such tools could be a great help to authors improving the quality of
> their documents.

There's a serious chicken and egg problem here. Adding proper markup
to documents is a painful and expensive process for little to no
benefit. That's a hard sell to bosses and overworked designers. So
proper markup is usually a labor of love which is generally where we
see it; authored by people with a stake in it or perfectionists (like
myself or others on this list).

Browser and authoring tool vendors need to invest time and energy in
improving the benefits of compliance even if there might not be an
immediate gain.

--

Orion Adrian

Received on Saturday, 15 April 2006 23:33:57 UTC