- From: Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:14:03 +0100
- To: "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: "'HTML WG'" <public-html@w3.org>, <www-international@w3.org>
+1 to the arguments that many people on this thread have already been making (while I was away) for avoiding the redefinition of meta content-language in HTML5. I'd just like to add a couple of points. First, if we're looking for a way of using the meta element rather than disallowing it, why not simply propose that it be treated as equivalent to an HTTP header declaration, and clearly specify that browsers can use the initial item in any sequence of values for the meta content-language as a fallback for the default text-processing language where there is no language attribute. I believe that this was the original intent, and I suspect that this would be consistent with its use in current pages, while still preserving the possibility to use the meta element principally as metadata. ( Of course, one would then need to define the relationship between any HTTP header and the meta tag when both are applied to a page.) Second, I don't think we should base our rationale for features solely on past or current practice. Eg, even though there are few applications processing in-document language metadata at the moment, it seems feasible to me that there may be in the future, and that we shouldn't close the door on that possibility by changing the meta element to be yet another way of just setting the text-processing language - especially since we currently have a way of allowing for both attributes and meta data to co-exist. RI ============ Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/International/ http://rishida.net/
Received on Wednesday, 27 August 2008 11:14:36 UTC