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Re: Use of the LANG attribute

for

From: Robinson, Norman B - Washington, DC
Date: Feb 15, 2005 11:52AM

The actual RFC gives examples of purpose and use.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1766.txt.

As a practical matter, I think it should be used for content
external/embedded from the web page you are on, such as an audio file or
video so you can determine what language it is without understanding
that language. I simply wouldn't identify the world as a foreign
language for the online shopping application you reference. As a
customer I want to send my five year old to order "Duck La'Orange" and
expect it to be a BRANDING or PRODUCT selection title, not understand it
means "orange duck" (if that is, in fact, what it means ;)

Also, I understand you were specific to LANG attribute, but I wanted to
also mention some of the other language dependent codings that might
affect your discussion:

The DOCTYPE is for marking your content target. E.g., <!DOCTYPE HTML
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">. The DOCTYPE Language
(listing of possible codes:
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/iso639a.html) Specifies the public
text language, the natural language encoding system used in the creation
of the referenced object - the default web content.

Note, to keep this relevant to this lists purpose, this can be important
to assistive technologies in general. I.e., Web Accessibility Initiative
checkpoint 3.2 (http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag-curric/sam29-0.htm).

Regards,

Norman Robinson