Re: [Ltru] xml:lang syntax

[Leif Halvard Silli <lhs at malform.no>]

Phillips, Addison 2008-05-09 19.59:
> Ø  But it would be less clumsy if xml:lang took a list, or we had xml:langs that did.
>
> I think this would be bad. Lists of language (asserting the language of a span of content) make processing, parsing, validation, and other operations harder. They make it harder for users to tag content, since users have to think of potentially more than one tag.
>   

That it may be illegal with more thane one tag does not mean that tools 
and users must not know about more than one tag in order to understand 
what that single tag means.

You must for intance know that 'zh' covers 'yum' and vice versa. You 
must try to figure out what "mul" covers. You must figure out what "no" 
refers to. Etc.

>  They make it harder to interpret content (since the language tags applied may not go together or even be contradictory). This idea that an item is in “multiple languages” is mostly wrong. 

If it is only "mostly wrong", then it isn't wrong.

I think the key thing is _pairs_ as  Shawn spoke about or "different 
levels of specificity" as Peter called the same thing:

    "3. declaring a single variety for content/resources at multiple
    levels of specificity."

For instance "mul,en,fr" is a list which says the same thing, becuse 
"en" is encompassed in "mul, as is "fr". Likewise "zh,yum,cmn" is a list 
of the same thing because 'yum' and cmn' ar contained in 'zh'. "no,nn" 
is a list of the same thing."

It should be much better to give a list, in order to tell what you mean 
by that unclear tag "no", or that unclear tag "mul" or that unclear tag 
"zh", instead of  to simply write any of those tags, alone.

> If you need a list of languages or have some different application other than declaring the text processing language of an element then you should use your own element or attribute to convey this information.

One's own attribute or element is not an option in HTML. But I do 
understand the general advice you give here, which builds on the 
assumption that a paragraph language will be the same as its parent, and 
thus you can only mark those parts of it which are in a different language.

However, if you want to say something about that very paragraph as such, 
then you must say that it is multilingual "mul". Or that it is a 
wordlist for Nynorsk-Bokmål "no,nn,nb". For instance, the general 
punctuation rules for multlingual section might differ from that of the 
main language of that resource.
-- 
leif halvard silli
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