Re: ISSUE-88 / Re: what's the language of a document ?

CE Whitehead, Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:02:40 -0500:
> I like Leif's solution--to use the first language specified in http 
> as the text processing language when none is specified in the html 
> tag.

Perhaps this is something you could live with as well, Ian?  

Otherwise, if at least one more person agrees, then I will formally 
write a change proposal which permits 'http-equiv="Content-Language"' 
to contain more than one language, but only when the root element uses 
the @lang attribute.

Leif H Silli


> From: Leif Halvard Silli <> 
> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:57:09 +0100
>> Ian Hickson, Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:39:08 +0000 (UTC):
>>> On Thu, 11 Mar 2010, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
    ....
>>>> As a result, the HTML5 spec best should just say that <meta http-equiv 
>>>> is used primarily as meta-information on the server side and is 
>>>> therefore in general ignored on the client side.
>>> 
>>> It's not ignored on the client side in practice.
> 
>> Yes it is. As long as you use the @lang attribute, then META 
>> content-langauge has no effect. Hence servers should be free to use it 
>> as they want = according to the HTTP specs.
> 
>> So, hereby I propose a compromise solution:
> 
>> If the HTML document *doesn't* use the @lang attribute on the root 
>> element, then the content-language pragma is forbidden from containing 
>> more than one language tag - and this language tag will also define the 
>> language of the document.
> 
>> However, if the document does use the @lang attribute on the root 
>> element, then authors are free to use 'http-equiv="Content-Language"' 
>> for what it is meant for according to HTTP.
> I like this solution.
[...]
-- 
Leif Halvard Silli

Received on Friday, 12 March 2010 02:41:49 UTC