Re: For review: Tagging text with no language

Christophe Strobbe wrote:
> Then what is a screen reader (or a text-to-speech program used by a 
> dyslexic
> user) supposed to do with the "zxx"?

Nothing. I think you've hit on a good test I think, if a screen-reader 
can be expected to do something with it, it isn't zxx.

> Why couldn't I write XHTML code like the one below?
> 
> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="fr">
> <!-- ... -->
> <p>Voici le fameux <span xml:lang="en">hello world</span> en Java.</p>
> <code xml:lang="en">
>     public static void main(String[] args) {
>         System.out.println("<span xml:lang="fr">bonjour le monde!</span>");
>     }
> }
> </code>

Yes, this is preferable.

I was thinking poorly about computer languages earlier, forgetting that 
any language higher than machine code is for humans more than for 
machines. Strictly we could consider high-level languages to be a sort 
of non-linguistic data that is based on linguistic data, but until there 
is a mechanism for saying, e.g. "computer-readable code based on 
English" then "public static void main" is best described as "English".

Received on Monday, 16 April 2007 11:38:49 UTC