[whatwg] lang versus xml:lang

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> 
> I start to think that lang="" should also be allowed in XML documents. 
> xml:lang is nice, but if you don't have knowledge of the HTML namespace 
> knowing the language of certain constructs isn't that valuable. It would 
> also make HTMLElement.lang useful for XML documents...
> 
> (And user agents have to support and support this stuff already too.)

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Simon Pieters wrote:
> 
> If lang="" in text/html will still be in the null namespace, then I 
> agree.

I hesitate to do this for the same reason we don't have <base href> in 
HTML -- it is stomping on XML-native mechanisms for the same thing. I'd 
rather not have people who use XHTML stomping all over the XML-native 
solutions; it sets a bad precedent and defeats many of the advantages of 
XML in the first place.

-- 
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