On Sat, 22 Feb 1997 19:37:43 +0000 (GMT),
Misha Wolf <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Tomas,
>
> You raised the question of whether to do language labelling via <HTML LANG=xx>
> or via the <MEAT HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" ...> mechanism.
> In the Language pages for the Tenth International Unicode Conference (go to
> <http://www.reuters.com/unicode/iuc10> and click on "Language"), we put the
> language labels on HTML containers.
It's my impression that the HTML DTD (Wilbur and Cougar 3.2) intends that
language-specific processing via the attribute LANG="" will honor the
containment hierarchy of the document, as though the declaration
were something like:
<ENITTY (%contentElements;) lang NAME #INHERITED >
although, of course, SGML has no keyword "#INHERITED" that has the
effect of telling the parser/application to apply the attribute
value to subelements. TEI has this keyword, and some other apps
do as well. It would simply mean that any element which has a
language attribute "inherits" the value from the parent if it's
not set on that element type in the instance. Works great in
principle. (TEI's #INHERITED is actually %INHERITED, and resolves
to #IMPLIED, since to have created a new keyword would have taken
TEI out of the conformance boundaries within which it wanted to
play. It has to be an application convention as of now -- but feel
free to write to your ISO rep and ask for this to get fixed!)
It's amazing that SGML does not have this mechanism, given the
rigorous hierarchical nature of element structure.
If HTML (I18N) is intended to work in some way *other than this*,
could someone please let me know, and provide a reference URL?
Thanks.
Thanks, too, Misha, for keeping the I18N concerns in front of the
METADATA community. There's a strong move toward Unicode, but as
we all know, Unicode does not of itself get the job done. The
LANG="" attribute of HTML 3.2 helps a lot.
Robin
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