[whatwg] Spellchecking mark III

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Kristof Zelechovski
<giecrilj at stegny.2a.pl> wrote:
> The server has two ways of knowing the user's preferred language: the user's
> preferences and the browser settings, in that order.

Both of which are often wrong.  Users may be multilingual, and
multiple users may use the same computer.  On the forum I administer,
I post almost exclusively in English.  However, sometimes I find
occasion to write a post partly or wholly in Hebrew.  How is the site
supposed to know when I'll decide to do that before I even start
typing the post?  How can the site ever be sure what language the user
will type until he actually starts typing?

The server might be able to make an educated guess as to what language
will be entered, but so can the browser.  And the browser is in a
*much* better position to check that guess, because it has access in
real time to the actual text the user is typing, plus the user
interface language, and -- of course -- any lang= or xml:lang=
attributes specified in the HTML.  Ergo, the logic should be left up
to the browser.

> Submitting in two languages usually needs two controls, one for English and
> one for German, with appropriate markup.  The server must be prepared to
> handle this use case.

I don't understand what you mean here.