RE: xml:lang attribute

[Asbjørn Ulsberg <asbjorn.ulsberg@xxxxxx>]

Arve Bersvendsen wrote:

> 1. If language is irrelevant for a feed, for instance in the 
> case I would want to distribute only images or instrumental 
> music via a feed, or I would want to distribute event logs via 
> a feed, the xml:lang is best omitted. 

I can understand the need for an 'unknown'-value of xml:lang,
as xml:lang is being inherited to its children. This inheritance
gives all children (e.g. <entry>'s) the same language as the
<feed>, although some of them might not have known languages.

In cases where languages aren't known, I feel that this is a
problem that can be pushed over to the producing systems. They
can chose to make the language required, they can use smart
algorithms to find out what language the entry has if it's not
specified by the user, they can find out the users language from
the Accept-header, or lastly; they can ommit it; causing the 
entry to potentially have a wrong language.

Entries having wrong language is however, not *that* big of a
deal, imho.

> 3. As I've read RFC 1766 in the past [...], using a comma-
> delimeted list of languages is acceptable. Is this equally 
> acceptable for xml:lang, since xml:lang refers to that RFC? 

I got very uncertain when reading this, but I was pretty
confident with that the values should be space-separated.
I might be wrong, though.

-- 
Asbjørn Ulsberg           -=|=-          X-No-Archive: No
"He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away"