Language for taxonomic names, redux

[Luc Pardon]

On 28-02-17 00:59, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:
> I feel that some of us here have difficulties
> understanding how the language tag makes any difference, since you have
> to provide a styling tag anyway.

  A separate styling tag is not needed. The css can be hooked to the
language tag directly, i.e.:

  .lang(la-taxon) {
       	font-style: italic;
  }

  The difference that this makes is that (this piece of) the css can be
re-used with any document, since the name of the tag is standardized.

  With classes, the author of the document and the author of the style
sheet have to agree on the class name on a case-by-case basis.

  Granted, this is not a big deal, but even if it were no deal at all,
the "span class" and "span lang" approach would be entirely equivalent
as far as styling is concerned, and the latter comes with other
advantages that the former does not have.

  Taking this one step further: without the lang tag, you would need at
least two pieces of markup: one for the style and one to prevent
translation. With the lang tag, you kill these two birds with one stone.

  And the lang tag also helps with (or is needed for) TTS.

  And - as you say - the lang tag also helps with the specialized spell
checker that you propose.

  And ... and ...


  Luc