Structured documents and absence of language information

[virach@nectec.or.th]

The first choice is preferable since "und" does not provide any
information. It also causes difficulty to other cases as Martin has
mentioned.

Virach

At Mon, 22 Apr 2002 11:00:15 +0900,
Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> We have so far mainly looked at two choices. The first one, and
> the one preferred in the W3C I18N WG/IG, is to use the empty string:
> 
>     xml:lang=""
> 
> The advantage of this is that it's implicitly evident, and it's
> the same as other, similar attributes. This use would have to
> be defined in the XML specification (either in a new version or
> by an erratum).
> 
> The second possibility we have considered is to use the language
> code "und" (Undetermined). One question here is whether it's
> okay to use that for things that are not in any natural language
> at all (e.g. pure numeric data, programs, mathematics,...).
> As far as I know, the ISO 632 standards don't apply to such things.
> The other problem is that we would need to change XML to say
> that e.g.
> 
> <?xml version='...' ?>
> <root xml:lang='und'>
> ...
> </root>
> 
> is the same as:
> 
> <?xml version='...' ?>
> <root>
> ...
> </root>