Thanks Misha,

One reason why this is so confusing is that the link in the XML Spec to IANA 
language identifiers takes you to IANA character sets:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#NT-LanguageID
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#IANA

jane

> >But when I read through the XML spec it appears that you can have either the 
> >2-letter language code or the IANA character set code - not both. Can you 
> >confirm this and if its correct, why have they done this?
> 
> You are confusing two quite different things:
> 
> 1.  Language.  Each sentence, or word, or even character, of an XML 
>     document may have a different language, indicated using an xml:lang 
>     attribute, see:
>        http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-lang-tag
> 
> 2.  Character set encoding.  An entire XML document must be encoded the 
>     same way.  This is indicated using an encoding declaration, see:
>        http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.html#NT-EncodingDecl
>     If the XML document is encoded using UTF-8 or UTF-16 then the 
>     encoding declaration may be omitted.
> 
> >Is it possible to 
> >define all three attributes using xml:lang 
> 
> No.  See above.
> 
> > or do we need to define a new 
> >structure?
> 
> No.  See above.
> 
> If you want more information, you may do any of the following:
> 
> -  Mail the W3C's public Internationalisation mailing list 
>    ([log in to unmask]).
> 
> -  If you are employed by a member of the W3C, join the W3C's 
>    Internationalisation Interest Group by mailing the W3C I18N IG 
>    Chair, Martin Dürst ([log in to unmask]).
> 
> -  If you are employed by a member of the W3C, join the W3C's 
>    Internationalisation Working Group by getting your W3C Advisory 
>    Committee representative to mail the W3C I18N WG Chair, 
>    Misha Wolf ([log in to unmask]).
> 
> Misha
> 
> [This mail was written using voice recognition software]
> 
> 
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