- From: CE Whitehead <cewcathar@hotmail.com>
- Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:26:46 -0400
- To: www-international@w3.org
Hi, I kind of like Mark's suggestion for making the definition of zxx clearer; it does not hurt anything (below are my comments also, along with some copy of the discussion at ietf-languages): >Mark Davis scripsit: >>And as a *general* statement about applying zxx to programming >>languages, I think that unless and until we add ", or programming >>languages" to the Description, it is unsuitable for application to >>programming languages. >That would only be true if there were a clear and convincing argument, >acceptable to all, that code is written in a natural language. Otherwise, >it is a mere judgement about a class of borderline cases. >>don't think we are that far apart here -- we both agree that zxx ought >>to be the right thing. Where we disagree is that you think it already >>has that meaning, and I can't see it at all in the standard. >All the standard says is "Non-linguistic content". So to assert that >code is not "zxx", you must say that it is linguistic content, though >you are unwilling to apply "en" (or, presumably, any other specific or >collective language tag). What is this linguistic content that is not >in any language? >You have for whatever reason decided that reading and writing code >(presumably exclusive of comments, which are unquestionably in English >or French or Japanese or what have you) is linguistic behavior, but why? >Learning to program is very unlike either acquiring French or Esperanto >as a first language, or learning them as a second language, though >admittedly more like the latter than the former. Sorry, I think that while loops and such have something of the logic of language! But you're right, a few keywords are in English or whatever! >Are you also willing >to say that mathematical formulae embedded in a math paper in English, >French, German, Russian, or what have you are linguistic content, though >certainly not in any of those languages? >> But since it is a broadening, we can make a change and then both of >> us would be happy (or at least happier). So what do you say we agree >>on that, and be done with this part of the issue? >Because it is not clear that it is a broadening, and it is very colorably >an out-of-scope extension. Why not mention musical notation (of >instrumental compositions, where there are no lyrics to muddy the >waters) as well? -- > John Cowan John, I think Mark's clarification is a good clarification here, though you also need to use zxx for programming code (whether you embed it in some other declaration or not); for if you have code with snippets of French or Chinese in a document.write statement the French or Chinese will just be the unicode representations of the characters anyway, & not the characters themselves the comments in Frnech or Chinese do not display & so special characters would not display anyway (French works o.k. though in comments; you just leave off the accents; so you can have French or any Latin character set languages in the code part of a document) --C. E. Whitehead cewcathar@hotmail.com [ I personally still think the current best way to tag snippets of code in a document where other languages are embedded in the code might be a series of embeddings-- <div id="morceau_de_code" lang="fr"> Banniere Publicitaire (de Raggett): Une adaptation francaise <code lang="zxx"> // Dans le codage ci-dessous il s'agit d'une adaption en francais du codage de Dave Raggett qui se trouve // dans le didacticiel du W3C, // "Advanced HTML", http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Advanced.html // if (document.images) { imagesdesPubs = new Array("http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/hosts/csail.gif", "http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/hosts/ercim.gif", "http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/hosts/keio.gif"); URLsdesPubs = new Array("www.csail.mit.edu", "www.ercim.org", "www.keio.ac.jp"); cePub = 0; } </code> </div> ] _________________________________________________________________ Mortgage refinance is Hot. *Terms. Get a 5.375%* fix rate. Check savings https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&search=mortgage_text_links_88_h2bbb&disc=y&vers=925&s=4056&p=5117
Received on Saturday, 21 April 2007 18:27:18 UTC