Re: A character is in the eye of the beholder

>> So I would rather recommend that we do not mix language
>> and the locale, but that we introduce a locale facility in HTTP.
>
>And abandon the idea of having multiple languages within a single
>document?  That seems a big price to pay.

I don't think you need to abandon the idea of multiple languages in a
document. You would still have the lang attribute, with locales attached to
that (i.e. fr-ca) but you may have to select a single sorting order for that
multilingual document, and define that up front, just as you need to declare
a character set for a document made up of a set of multilingual subdocuments
when using SGML.

>The locale model assumes that you are not in a multilingual environment.
>For example, it provides an upper->lower case mapping, but in i18n HTML
>you might need so use several different upper/lower mappings in a single
>document.

I am not convinced that upper/lowercase mappings that change on an
element-by-element basis would be sensible. How about a compromise. Entities
sent as separate parts of a MIME set could have separate locale statements
that control the way they are processed for case sensitive operations.

>It's an easy way out because it makes the problem seem manageable.
>Let's bring up cardboard cutouts of children to reduce food costs :-)

Not this close to Haloween, when cardboard cutouts tend to lead to extra
food costs:-)
----
Martin Bryan, The SGML Centre, Churchdown, Glos. GL3 2PU, UK 
Phone/Fax: +44 1452 714029   WWW home page: http://www.u-net.com/~sgml/

Received on Friday, 25 October 1996 13:34:51 UTC