23512 2013-10-14 21:43:29 +0000 API to expose actual language of a node, to aid scripts doing localisation and CJK editors during copy&paste and drag&drop 2017-07-21 11:01:07 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified WHATWG HTML unspecified Other All RESOLVED WONTFIX P3 enhancement Needs Impl Interest 1 ian ian annevk ian marcosscaceres mike contributor oldest_to_newest 94717 0 ian 2013-10-14 21:43:29 +0000 On Sat, 13 Jul 2013, Peter Occil wrote: > > > > > > a DOM attribute like "language" [...] since it's not currently > > > possible to get the language of a node through JavaScript [...] > > There are several use cases: > > - Localization of form controls in languages where browser support > is lacking, such as some minor languages. > - Localization of HTML elements, especially date formatting of span > and div elements in the page's default language. > > When it comes to retrieving the language of an element, a JavaScript > implementation can do everything except retrieve the value of the > Content-Language header of the document, so even providing a DOM attribute > like "contentLanguage" will resolve this issue. 94721 1 ian 2013-10-14 22:02:45 +0000 Another use case Ryosuke Niwa mentioned is editors; they need to know the language of text when copying or dragging or pasting or dropping, so that CJK text ends up rendered correctly. See Ryosuke's e-mails here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2013Aug/0015.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2013Aug/0093.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2013Aug/0152.html 96896 2 ian 2013-11-27 23:56:27 +0000 See also comments from Elliott, dbaron, and Anne, which talk about how this is implemented as an internal CSS property by browsers and the implications thereof: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2013Sep/0199.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2013Sep/0201.html 125593 3 annevk 2016-03-22 14:49:10 +0000 Main problem I see: I don't see how this squares with WebKit/Chromium's strategy of doing language inheritance through CSS. 128755 4 annevk 2017-07-21 11:01:07 +0000 If this is still desired, please file a new issue at https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/new.