This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 9420 - The legal syntax of <META http-equive="content-language" content="*">
Summary: The legal syntax of <META http-equive="content-language" content="*">
Status: RESOLVED NEEDSINFO
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: LC
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/semantic...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: 9411
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2010-04-05 19:19 UTC by Leif Halvard Silli
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:47 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Leif Halvard Silli 2010-04-05 19:19:21 UTC
Bug 9417 specifies changes to the algorithm for setting the pragrma set default language of the document. 

Those changes are meant to make user agents treat the content of META content-language 100% the same way as xml:lang="*" and lang="*". E.g. if the META content-language declaration says "nn,no",, then the language of the document is set to the literal string "nn,no", even if this is an illegal langauge tag.

This bug, however, specifies the *legal syntax* of META content-language element. The legal syntax differs from what Bug 9417 suggest as the the way user agents treat the META content-language element. The reason for the difference is the link between the META content-language and HTTP content-language - they should have the same syntax.

The legal syntax of META content-language should be the following:

(1) A single BCP47 valid language tag should [of course] be permitted
(2) A comma separated list of 2 or more BCP47 valid language tags
      (treated as a single, illegal, language by user agents)
(3) The empty string (to set the langauge to unknown)
(4) Whitespace and/or a single comma (as synonymous with the empty string.

Regarding (4): In Mozilla, the META content-language is a whitespace or a single comma, then these character will be ignord by the user agent. Thus a CSS selector such as 

                    *:lang(\,) {color:lime}

or 

                   *:lang(\ ) {color:lime}

does not work. This is the behaviour I am after. (I realize that this also requires changes to the algorithm.)
Comment 1 Leif Halvard Silli 2010-04-05 19:25:56 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)

> (4) Whitespace and/or a single comma (as synonymous with the empty string.

A more purist approach would be to forbid (4). The empty string can do the same thing. The only reason I suggest (4) is because it allows something which is compatible with Mozilla browsers.
Comment 2 Leif Halvard Silli 2010-04-05 20:14:22 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> 
> > (4) Whitespace and/or a single comma (as synonymous with the empty string.
> 
> A more purist approach would be to forbid (4). The empty string can do the same
> thing. The only reason I suggest (4) is because it allows something which is
> compatible with Mozilla browsers.


CHANGE: I withdraw (4). Thus only the empty string should have the meaning "unknown language"!
Comment 3 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-04-13 00:53:59 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Did Not Understand Request
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: I don't understand. What is the problem that this solves? What is the use case?