Re: Language labelling

[My ISP was down for 60 hours, I might have missed some messages and 
the archive of the list does not work.]

Very well re-stated, François.  To a certain extend the question of the 
syntax is secondary.  To me is acceptable for the *single language tag* 
to be <META HTTP-EQUIV...> (in <HTML LANG=xx>, or somewhere else).  But, 
it should work for served, directly accepted docs, etc.

Tomas

On Sat, 22 Feb 1997, Francois Yergeau wrote:

> Given that we want to have a single language tag in a document (no 
> potential conflict), where is the best place to put it?
> 
> Tomas is for <META HTTP-EQUIV...> (also legal) because this is explicitely
> designed for HTTP servers to pick up and send as an HTTP header.
> 
> I'm for <HTML LANG=xx>, because it fits into the structure of the HTML
> document and applies to the whole document.  Although not designed
> explicitly for this purpose, servers may still pick up a language tag from
> there to put in an HTTP header.  This is not forbidden, just like indexing
> engines are not forbidden to use the <TITLE>, some other special-purpose
> <META> or even comments for their purposes.
> 
> If an HTML document is retrieved from something else than an HTTP server
> and displayed, the HTML parser will be aware of a LANG attribute on <HTML>
> and should do any language-dependent rendering correctly.  If it sees a
> <META HTTP-EQUIV>, however, it may well think "this is only for HTTP
> servers" and ignore it.  The standards do not require HTML parsers to know
> anything about the meaning of HTTP headers found within <META> elements,
> only to parse the latter correctly.

Received on Monday, 24 February 1997 05:11:32 UTC