[tei-council] xml-colon-thing

[Christian Wittern]

Lou Burnard <lou.burnard at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk> writes:

> Syd Bauman wrote:
>
>
>> However, if this "choice of lang= or xml:lang= but not both" proposal
>> is not adopted, then those converting legacy data will have to go
>> about creating a look-up table that will convert their local lang=
>> values (which are by definition arbitrary IDREFs) into xml:lang=
>> values (which will be by definition RFC 3066 or its successor
>> language tags).
>
> No they won't. My proposal is exactly that they don't have to convert 
> their instance data at all.
>
>
>> Of course, many projects actually deliberately choose to use RFC 3066
>> language tags as the value of id= of <language> (and thus of lang=)
>> already, and thus wouldn't have to do anything special.
>
> Quite.


On the <language> element, P4X says the following:
<q>
On this element, the global id attribute specifies the identifier for
the writing system declaration for this language (e.g. eng, fra,
deu). Its value will usually be a language identifier from ISO 639,
possibly extended to indicate the writing system in use (e.g. heb-hel
for Hebrew written in Greek.
</q>

If people did follow this recommendation, there is no need for them to
convert any instance data.  

BTW, do you plan to retain lang as a IDREF?



-- 

 Christian Wittern 
 Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
 47 Higashiogura-cho, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8265, JAPAN