Re: [Ietf-languages] Fwd: I-D Action: draft-msporny-d-langtag-ext-00.txt

[Manu Sporny <[e-mail]>]

On 5/27/19 4:56 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
> OK, so the issue is that (in layman's terms) they need to declare
> the paragraph to be of a certain directionality, even if the text
> that begins the paragraph (or some other text that would set the tone
> for directionality) might not be of that directionality. Is that
> right?

Basically, but you're missing a number of requirements, please refer to
the background information I noted in my initial response to you.

> If so, I contend that a plain old language tag should still be a 
> sufficient indicator of that:

Yes, but that was rejected as a solution a long time ago. Some of our
implementers are running in constrained environments and do not want to
require a full blown HTML processor to understand language and base
direction. There are use cases where you can't escape that (such as Ruby
markup), but for the simple ones... they want a simpler solution than
"include this gigantic HTML processor in your solution".

> <span 
> lang="ar">rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
>
> 
IS A LONG WORD.</span> (example is HTML, substitute your favorite
> text format that uses language tags)

This is not a solution as it would require a full blown HTML processor
to understand the variations in an interoperable way (like, for example,
what do you do when the tags mismatch, or there is a syntax error)?

-- manu

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Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
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