xml:lang (was Re: Evaluatable XPath)

[Mike Brown <mike at skew dot org>]

> <text xml:lang="ENG">English text</text>
> <text xml:lang="RU">Russian text</text>

I agree that this would be a more elegant solution.

It should be noted, however, that there are restrictions on the value of
xml:lang, as defined in section 2.12 of the XML 1.0 Recommendation. "ENG"
would not be allowed, because the recommendation unfortunately says that
only two-letter codes from ISO 639:1988 can be used. They didn't realize
that 3-letter codes were on the horizon with ISO 639-2.

For the current lists, see:

	http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/termcodes.html

	and

	http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/codechanges.html

Also understand that ISO 639:1988 2-letter codes aren't the *only* things
that be used as xml:lang attribute values. The recommendation defines
several options. But in any case, "ENG" is not currently allowed. Also
note that for a document to be valid, xml:lang has to be declared in the
DTD for the element types where it is used.

   - Mike
___________________________________________________________
Mike J. Brown, software engineer, Webb Interactive Services
XML/XSL stuff: http://www.skew.org/    http://www.webb.net/


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