On Sat, 8 Mar 1997, Misha Wolf wrote:
> There has been a recent debate, on the www-international list, regarding the
> relationship between:
>
> 1. <... LANG=xxx> language tagging of HTML as per RFC 2070,
> 2. <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" Content="xxx">.
> 3. <META NAME = "DC.language" CONTENT = "...">
>
> These flavours seem to be very loosely coupled. I am trying to understand the
> uses and relative priorities of the various flavours. What should happen when
> they disagree?
>
> The last two flavours are designed to exist both inside and outside an HTML
> document. Would it be sensible to argue that where the HTML flavour is present,
> the other two should be absent/ignored?
HTTP type can be determined without getting the whole document (just the
head). I think it's basically pre-unicode when nobody had figured out
how to deal with several languages on one page. Also, it's tied in
with content negotiation and the Accept-Language header. I'm slightly
out of touch with that topic, but you can set your browser to preferentially
accept a natural language and a negotiating server would give you
what wou want to start with (instead of going through a "click here
for English" page).
The three are targeted at slightly different objects - http type
for server/client, HTML for browsers and DC for cross-media indexing.
I agree it's confusing.
Andrew Daviel
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