Re: CSS3 - Define Language

I thought that the  main language must be specified in the html tag, so that screenreaders pronounce this correctly.
I always specify this as required for xhtml 1.1
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">

I use XHTML 1.1 and CSS 

And when I want to change the language in a sentence I write this:

I  asked my french friend <em xml:lang="fr">Comment ça va?</em> 

so that speechreaders pronounce the language correctly and in text-only-browsers the  foreign text is emphased as I believe foreign languages should be emphased. I am convinced that this has  to do with usability and accessibility of a page..

CSS has to do with presentation of a page. IMO language is not a presentational attribute  but a structural attribute in the content of a page.. and this must be marked up in the code when I am trying to seperate structure from pressentation as XHTML requires.. and also  the coming semantic web.. 

In html you can also specify the language of a document in the metatags:
<meta name="language" content="en">

Greetings
Ineke van der Maat



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Glazman" <glazman@netscape.com>
To: <www-style@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: CSS3 - Define Language


> > I mean, really, language is part of the style of the document. 
> 
> 
> I think that most of the readers of this mailing-list will disagree with 
> that.
> 
> Let me give you an example :
> 
> <p>bonjour comment ça va</p>
> 
> You can attach a lot of styles to this paragraph, you can even make it 
> invisible if you want, but you'll hardly change the fact it contains 
> words in French language...
> 
> If you are expecting a CSS-base language to translate "on the fly" the 
> contents of that P, that's another story, and I am now sure that readers 
> will disagree with it.
> 
> </Daniel>
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Friday, 15 March 2002 09:47:10 UTC