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Bug 8088 - Change back the meaning of <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="FOO, BAR">
Summary: Change back the meaning of <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="FOO, ...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 major
Target Milestone: LC
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: a11y, disputedSpec, WGDecision
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-10-27 17:28 UTC by Leif Halvard Silli
Modified: 2011-04-08 22:20 UTC (History)
10 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Leif Halvard Silli 2009-10-27 17:28:26 UTC
http://www.w3.org/mid/op.u2gd6bq7idj3kv@simon-pieterss-macbook.local

According to the draft,  <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en" > "sets the document-wide default language".  As a consequence (?), the draft permits only one language tag in the content attribute.

This represents a deviation from how it otherwise is used and specified - e.g. in HTML 4.

The draft must say that it defines the languages of the intended audiences, and that it may be used in content negotiation and in search engines etc. And it must permit several languages to be specified.

If the spec wants to express a way to decide the "document-wide default language", then one could define another META element variant for that purpose. Or one could define that the first listed language in the list of languages inside "content", represents the documument-wide lanuage.  Thus, in in this example, the document-wide language is "en": <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en,fr,sp" >

References: http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/language-decl/
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-10-27 20:31:33 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: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: This request doesn't match how the pragma is used in deployed content.
Comment 2 Leif Halvard Silli 2009-10-27 21:08:56 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)

> Rationale: This request doesn't match how the pragma is used in deployed
> content.

Eventually, provide documentation for whatever you mean by that claim.
 
Comment 3 Michael[tm] Smith 2009-10-29 03:04:18 UTC
raised in Tracker as Issue 88:
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/88
Comment 4 Henri Sivonen 2009-10-29 13:12:55 UTC
What's the a11y relevance of this bug?
Comment 5 Martin Kliehm 2009-10-29 13:55:25 UTC
Added the keyword #a11y because the document-wide default language is also relevant for the language selection in screenreaders. Admittedly to my knowledge currently no screenreader supports multiple language selection, but that doesn't mean that future versions don't do anything either. So this is a reminder that language definition does have relevance for screenreader software, to what extend multiple languages are relevant remains to be determined.
Comment 6 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-01-28 04:00:44 UTC
Removing TrackerRequest since this has already been escalated.
Comment 7 Michael Cooper 2010-02-11 17:26:25 UTC
Per the proposal at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Jan/0245.html, the HTML A11Y TF does not plan to formally work on this issue at this time. This does not mean the TF has no interest in it, but does not have immediate plans to work on it. The TF may review the issue in the future.
Comment 8 Martin Kliehm 2010-10-01 15:05:26 UTC
Change proposal by W3C i18n WG awaiting decicion:
http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Htmlissue88
Comment 10 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2011-04-08 22:14:09 UTC
I assume this is requesting that I apply the diff in:
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Apr/0308
Comment 11 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2011-04-08 22:15:56 UTC
The diff no longer applies cleanly, so I will attempt to manually apply it. The result may thus not be exactly as suggested in the diff.
Comment 12 contributor 2011-04-08 22:20:46 UTC
Checked in as WHATWG revision r5980.
Check-in comment: apply wg decision
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=5979&to=5980