RE: Regarding update of language declaration tests (I81NWG)

Leif, hi --

well I do not agree that the complete absence of a language declaration
(that is of an http header or anything)
is identical to an explicit declaration
that there is no specific content language --
thus, if I had an html lang= null declaration
I would not try to go higher to override it;
however if I had an html tag with no language declaration
or perhaps even no html tag just a p tag and then the content
and no lang= in the p tag
then I guess if I were a processor I would look just about everywhere for a lang=
or something before equating this with lang=null.

Best,

C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com
> Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:52:18 +0200
> From: xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no
> To: cewcathar@hotmail.com
> CC: www-international@w3.org; ishida@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Regarding update of language declaration tests (I81NWG)
> 
> CE Whitehead, Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:44:36 -0400:
> > 
> > Leif, thanks very very much! This is nice.
> > 
> > I personally do like lang="" as an option -- in fact I thought it was 
> > generally preferable to und for some reason.
> 
> I have come to see it like this: The syntax of Content-Language is, 
> ultimately, regulated not by HTML5, but by HTTP (RFC 2616), which has 
> no definition of what an empty Content-Language header means. It does 
> however define what the *lack* of a Content-Language header means: [1]
> 
> ]]
> If no Content-Language is specified, the default is that the content is 
> intended for all language audiences. This might mean that the sender 
> does not consider it to be specific to any natural language, or that 
> the sender does not know for which language it is intended.
> [[
> 
> So if you are willing to take the lack of a Content-Language header all 
> together, as somewhat equal to a lang="*" attribute in lack of a 
> language tag (in other words, whose content is the empty string), then 
> HTTP and HTML5 as well as that QA article [2] *do* in fact agree that 
> 'und' is the second choice.
> 
> >> New change proposal: Allow multiple values in the http-equiv 
> >> Content-Language element (ISSUE 88) [1]
> >> 
> >> Differences from the former: 
> >> Accepted Ian’ algorithm.
> >> Accepted single language tag as a valid value.
> >> Dropped request for the empty string to be valid.
> >> Added request to make multiple values valid.
> >> 
> >> [1] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ContentLanguages
> 
> [1] http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#rfc.section.14.12
> [2] http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-no-language
> -- 
> leif halvard silli