RE: meta content-language

Most servers that do language negotiation that I'm aware of use external data (usually either directory structure or file names/file extensions) to determine the page to serve or a page scripting language (JSP, ASP, etc.) with language resources to assemble an appropriate page. 

In fact, I'm not aware of any software which uses <meta> for page processing or content selection. Hence my general tendency not to want to add it to the determination of page processing language in HTML5: it has the potential to alter how existing pages are processed to little benefit.

Addison

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Lab126

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org [mailto:www-international-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Leif Halvard Silli
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 4:18 AM
> To: Richard Ishida
> Cc: 'Ian Hickson'; 'HTMLWG'; www-international@w3.org;
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> Subject: Re: meta content-language
> 
> 
> Richard Ishida 2008-08-18 16.48:
> 
> > Leif, I'm not sure that makes sense... The prompt for the content
> > negotiation should come from the user agent, since it reflects
> the
> > preferences of the user, not the language of a given page.  The
> user agent
> > sends the user's preferences (or its defaults) via the Accept-
> Language HTTP
> > field, and the server uses that information to do content
> negotiation (if
> > enabled on the server). If the server finds a match, it returns
> meta
> > information about the document it is serving in the Content-
> Language field
> > of the HTTP header.
> 
> 
> I did not intend to propose a change in anything. I just wondered
> whether it could be tested whether servers actually read the META
> elements in order to present things as you said.
> 
> The trouble is that if you have 'page-english.html' and
> 'page-german.html', and both of them contain <meta ...
> content="en, de">, then such a negotiaton would not work.
> 
> 
> 
>    [...]
> 
> >> Richard Ishida 2008-08-15 21.42:
> >>>> From: Henri Sivonen [mailto:hsivonen@iki.fi]
> >>
> >>>> What purpose does metadata serve if it isn't actionable?
> >>>
> 
> >>> Metadata is actionable if some application is written to
> >>> use it. It is not actionable if the information is not
> >>> available.
> 
> >>
> >> Regarding the question of "actionable": Ideally, authors should
> be
> >> able to add content-language information via the META tag, and
> >> then experience that the web server - and the Web browser - use
> >> this information to perform language negotiation.
> >>
> >> Richard, you made many tests of how UAs react to language
> tagging:
> >> Perhaps it is possible to make test case for what web servers
> and
> >> browsers do with the content-langauage information with regard
> to
> >> content negotiation
> 
> --
> leif halvard silli

Received on Tuesday, 19 August 2008 15:19:17 UTC