Re: [css3-fonts] language system used when language is unknown

John Hudson wrote:

> >    When the language of an element is unknown, user agents
> >    may either use the default language system or infer one
> >    based on other heuristics if appropriate.
> 
> While I don't see a problem with allowing this presuming that UA
> makers can come up with reliable heuristics, I'm having trouble
> imagining anything other than dictionary analysis coming up with an
> appropriate OTL language system tag other than <dflt>. Generally
> speaking, unless a font has been made for a specific language with
> minority variant behaviour, the <dflt> language system is always
> going to conform to majority usage of the script, hence any
> inference of language system from script is going to result in
> <dflt> anyway. If a font has been made for minority use, then this
> is going to result in an incorrect inference for any majority
> language page, unless dictionary analysis is available *and* the
> font contains OTL language system tagged variant behaviour
> appropriate for majority use.
> 
> Is dictionary analysis the sort of heuristic you are envisioning?

Actually no, I was thinking more about other information the user
agent has about the page, the encoding of the page or the content
language in the HTTP header for example.  The "right" way is really
for authors to set the language of the page via the lang attribute.

Cheers,

John Daggett

Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2013 19:13:16 UTC