- From: Haijo Schipper <abigail@ny.fnx.com>
- Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 12:40:32 -0400 (EDT)
- To: mtbryan@sgml.u-net.com (Martin Bryan)
- Cc: www-international@w3.org, www-html@w3.org
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 12:38:54 UTC