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

On 02/05/2013 10:33 AM, John Daggett wrote:
>
> There's currently an issue in the CSS3 Fonts spec related to the
> OpenType language system used when rendering text in situations where
> the HTML lang tag has not been set.  The HTML5 spec says that if the
> lang tag hasn't been set then "it must be interpreted as meaning that
> the language of the node is explicitly unknown". [1]
>
> The issue, listed in section 6.2 [2], is whether user agents must use
> the default language system or whether they can infer based on a
> heuristic the language system in certain contexts.  For example, for
> some scripts it might be possible to infer the language system.
>
> I propose allowing UA's the option of using heuristics to infer the
> language system in these cases:
>
>    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.
>
> Note that the language system determines whether language-specific
> features are applied.  If an author does specify the language then
> none of these heuristics would apply.

I think CSS3 Fonts should defer language detection to the document
language, as we do everywhere else in CSS, and just use the default
system when the document language's rules (whatever they are) say
the language is unknown.

~fantasai

Received on Tuesday, 5 February 2013 21:39:32 UTC