RE: For review: Tagging text with no language

Hi, I have not given this new draft a really careful read at all; but I do 
think that in the third paragraph of "When the Language is Undetermined" 
section, the reference of "These values" is unclear (see below); you mean 
"und", "", and "zxx", right?  But it's been a bit since you've mentioned 
these and I started looking for the reference in the previous paragraph 
which is the normal place to look.  It was not there.

Just my thoughts.  (Anyone on the list, feel free to disagree.)

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com

* * * Excerpt from Draft * * *

"However, according to the people who define language subtags, you should 
only tag text as undetermined if you can't just leave it as is. In practice, 
this means that markup described in the previous paragraph should only be 
used where the format you are using requires it, or where undetermined text 
is embedded in some content that has already been labeled for language in 
some way."

"These values indicate that we cannot determine, for one reason or another, 
what the appropriate language information is, or whether the text is 
non-linguistic."


* * *





>Najib and Martin,
>
>Thanks for your comments.  I had another go at the document.
>http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-no-language
>
>RI
>
>
>============
>Richard Ishida
>Internationalization Lead
>W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
>
>http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
>http://www.w3.org/International/
>http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Martin Duerst [mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp]
> > Sent: 19 May 2007 02:30
> > To: Najib Tounsi; Richard Ishida
> > Cc: www-international@w3.org; 'LTRU Working Group'
> > Subject: Re: For review: Tagging text with no language
> >
> > Hello Richard, Najib,
> >
> > At 07:25 07/05/19, Najib Tounsi wrote:
> > >
> > >Hi Richard,
> > >
> > >My feedback is perhaps subjective. My feeling is that, in
> > some places, the text is not sufficently clear for those who
> > don't speak English fluently.
> > >
> > >Anyway, here are some remarks (about
> > >http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-no-language#unde
>termined)
> > >
> > >- You write
> > >"For example, xml:lang="" might be used if text is included
> > into a document from a database that doesn't provide language
> > information..."
> > >It is the text or the document which is from a database? The
> > text of course.
> > >Should I understand this:
> > >For example, xml:lang="" might be used if text is to be
> > included into a document and (the text) comes from a database
> > that doesn't provide language information ...?
> >
> > Very good point.
> >
> > >-You write
> > >"The effect would be to cancel any language information
> > declared higher up the hierarchy of elements in the document."
> > >What do "cancel any language" means?
> > > - remove the language information declared higher up the hierarchy?
> > >Wrong
> > > - override this declaration by the new one "und"? Right
> > >
> > >Finally the whole story (about the use of "und") is, if you
> > can "leave out the markup", go ahead. Mark up only if "you
> > have a particular need to indicate that the language is
> > undefined". Right?
> >
> > I was also a bit surprised by this. It's easy to read this as
> > "language tagging, so who cares?". It looks like it's quite
> > in contrast to what we say on language tags otherwise.
> >
> > Regards,    Martin.
> >
> >
> >
> > #-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
> > #-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp
> > mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp
> >
>
>

_________________________________________________________________
Make every IM count. Download Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. 
It’s free. http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGHM_MAY07

Received on Tuesday, 22 May 2007 19:01:31 UTC