[whatwg] Attributes, namespaces and language determination

Hi,

Looking at how to determine the language of a node[1]:

>To determine the language of a node, user agents must look at the nearest 
>ancestor element (including the element itself if the node is an element) 
>that has a lang or xml:lang attribute set. That specifies the language of 
>the node.

...and terminology[2]:

>Unless otherwise stated, all elements defined or mentioned in this 
>specification are in the http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml  namespace, and all 
>attributes defined or mentioned in this specification have no namespace 
>(they are in the per-element partition).

...it could be interpreted that the language of the text "foo" in the 
following document is "x":

   <foo lang="x"><p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">foo</p></foo>

...which is probably not what was intended.

[1] http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#lang
[2] http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#terminology

Regards,
Simon Pieters

Received on Monday, 23 January 2006 13:39:13 UTC