RE: Null change proposal for ISSUE-88 (mark II): proposed note

Hi, Leif, all!

From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> 
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:13:00 +0200


> I have to say though, that the dilemma, "Choosing between 
> Content-Language and attributes", is an oddly formulated one - I did 
> not know that I could choose ...
ME] Well, if we have both the html lang declaration and the meta content-language declaration as options,

authors always can choose to use one, or the other, or ignore both
and hope that defaults will work.

However, I thought that both a language specification in the html tag
and in addition a language specification in the http header or a meta Content-language element
were both essential to good practice.

> In that note, I can also not find any discussion of of the main problem 
> with Content-Language, as I see it: That it interferes with the 
> interpretation of an empty lang=""/xml:lang="".


ME] Yes

> In a Best practise document about @lang and content-language, how will 
> you explain to authors how they can avoid the problem that 
> Content-Language (the HTTP headers) interferes with Gecko's 
> interpretation of lang="" and xml:lang="", if it is not permitted to 
> place Content-Language meta element inside the document which can be 
> used to cancel this effect?
ME] Agreed.  This would be a problem.
(Content-authors mess things up and processors mess things up but I think it's the w3c's job to
specify recommendations for documents as properly as possible.)
Best,
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com