More than one language in a page

[David Stone]

What is the correct way to mark up, say, a div or p, to indicate
that it is in a different language to the main page? Are there
any potential pitfalls with different browsers associated with
doing this? If it makes any difference, this is in reference to
a page in mixed English and French:
http://www.chem.utoronto.ca/IChO.Ontario/index.html

[Ben C]

On 2008-10-21, David Stone <no******@domai n.invalidwrote:

What is the correct way to mark up, say, a div or p, to indicate
that it is in a different language to the main page?

You just do <div lang="en"etc. What browsers actually do with that
lang attribute is not so clear. In most cases probably nothing, although
it may influence choice of font in some.

Most fonts I've seen that are used for English will also contain all the
glyphs needed for French anyway.

I don't know if aural renderers use it to influence choice of speech
synthesizer. I doubt it, but you never know.

Are there any potential pitfalls with different browsers associated
with doing this? If it makes any difference, this is in reference to a
page in mixed English and French:
http://www.chem.utoronto.ca/IChO.Ontario/index.html

[Swifty]

Ben C wrote:

You just do <div lang="en"etc. What browsers actually do with that
lang attribute is not so clear. In most cases probably nothing, although
it may influence choice of font in some.

Well, some languages display right-to left so the difference there
should be significant. I believe that there are also spacing issues
around some punctuation, and word-splitting issues as well. Of course,
it's all down to the care with which the browser was coded.

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

[Ben C]

On 2008-10-22, Swifty <st***********@ gmail.comwrote:

Ben C wrote:

>You just do <div lang="en"etc. What browsers actually do with that
lang attribute is not so clear. In most cases probably nothing, although
it may influence choice of font in some.

Well, some languages display right-to left so the difference there
should be significant.

For that you've got to use dir=rtl or "direction: rtl". lang=ar by
itself won't make any difference.

I believe that there are also spacing issues around some punctuation,
and word-splitting issues as well. Of course, it's all down to the
care with which the browser was coded.

I haven't seen lang making a difference, but perhaps it should. Some
browsers use something based on Unicode Annex 14 for line-breaking, and
language is not involved in the algorithm they describe there.

See also http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/unicode/linebr.html

[Helmut Richter]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Ben C wrote:

For that you've got to use dir=rtl or "direction: rtl". lang=ar by
itself won't make any difference.

But the use of Arabic script should make a difference without the need of
specifying the writing direction.

I believe that there are also spacing issues around some punctuation,
and word-splitting issues as well. Of course, it's all down to the
care with which the browser was coded.

One example could be the interpretation of a quote symbol like <q>:

<p lang="en">The word <q><span lang="fr">chef</span></qis of French origin.</p>

should be rendered as

The word ``chef´´ is of French origin.

whereas the (incorrect)

<p lang="en">The word <span lang="fr"><q>ch ef</q></spanis of French origin.</p>

as

The word « chef » is of French origin.

--
Helmut Richter

[Hendrik Maryns]

Helmut Richter schreef:

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Ben C wrote:

>For that you've got to use dir=rtl or "direction: rtl". lang=ar by
itself won't make any difference.

But the use of Arabic script should make a difference without the need of
specifying the writing direction.

>>I believe that there are also spacing issues around some punctuation,
and word-splitting issues as well. Of course, it's all down to the
care with which the browser was coded.

One example could be the interpretation of a quote symbol like <q>:

<p lang="en">The word <q><span lang="fr">chef</span></qis of French origin.</p>

should be rendered as

The word ``chef´´ is of French origin.

You mean

The word “chef� is of French origin.

:-p
H.
--
Hendrik Maryns
http://tcl.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~hendrik/
=============== ===
Ask smart questions, get good answers:
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[Ben C]

On 2008-10-22, Helmut Richter <hh***@web.dewr ote:

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Ben C wrote:

>For that you've got to use dir=rtl or "direction: rtl". lang=ar by
itself won't make any difference.

But the use of Arabic script should make a difference without the need of
specifying the writing direction.

It will make a difference but it won't be quite right in all
circumstances.

For a simple Arabic string it will be OK (although left-aligned), but if
you've got Roman characters embedded in there, the bidi base direction
will be wrong.

You can see the result of bidi base direction if you try an example like
this:

<div dir="rtl">
ARABIC hello
</div>

which should appear as "hello CIBARA"

<div dir="ltr">
ARABIC hello
</div>

which should appear as "CIBARA hello".

I'm using capitals to mean strongly right-to-left characters-- of course
you'd need real Arabic in the example for it to work.

Unicode Annex 9 defines three bidi base directions: left-to-right,
right-to-left and neutral.

In HTML and CSS specifications you get left-to-right unless you specify
dir or direction respectively to get right-to-left. You can't have
neutral (except perhaps in a textarea or input).

I believe that there are also spacing issues around some punctuation,
and word-splitting issues as well. Of course, it's all down to the
care with which the browser was coded.

One example could be the interpretation of a quote symbol like <q>:

<p lang="en">The word <q><span lang="fr">chef</span></qis of French origin.</p>

should be rendered as

The word ``chef´´ is of French origin.

whereas the (incorrect)

<p lang="en">The word <span lang="fr"><q>ch ef</q></spanis of French origin.</p>

as

The word « chef » is of French origin.

Yes and there is stuff in CSS to do all that-- see the "quotes"
property, content: open-quote, and lang pseudos in CSS 2.1.

Not sure if any of the browsers actually implement all that stuff
though.

I think Korpela recommends just type the quote characters you want and
don't bother with <qbut I hope I'm not misquoting him [pause for
groans].

[Helmut Richter]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Stefan Ram wrote:

(However, »chef« as used above actually is the English
word (because it is said that it was of french origin),
and so it should not be marked as french.

The English word »chef« is of french origin.

The French word »chef« is not of french origin, it /is/ french.)

Right. I should have taken better example.

--
Helmut Richter

[Helmut Richter]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Hendrik Maryns wrote:

Helmut Richter schreef:

One example could be the interpretation of a quote symbol like <q>:

<p lang="en">The word <q><span lang="fr">chef</span></qis of French origin.</p>

should be rendered as

The word ``chef´´ is of French origin.

You mean

The word «chef» is of French origin.

No.I meant what I wrote.

1) When the quotes are in the outer text, they are English. These are also the
correct quotes (at least according to German quote rules where the *outer*
language determines the form of the quotes at least as long as the quoted
text is not a paragraph of its own).

2) Guillemets are used with a space to the enclosed text:

« chef »

In German, they are sometimes used the other way round without spaces
instead of other quotes:

»chef«

--
Helmut Richter

[Hendrik Maryns]

Helmut Richter schreef:

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Hendrik Maryns wrote:

>Helmut Richter schreef:

>>One example could be the interpretation of a quote symbol like <q>:

<p lang="en">The word <q><span lang="fr">chef</span></qis of French origin.</p>

should be rendered as

The word ``chef´´ is of French origin.

You mean

The word «chef» is of French origin.

No.I meant what I wrote.

This is interesting. I did not type «» (i.e. guillemets) at all. I
actually typed “� (i.e. proper curly open and close quotes); it seems
like your newsreader has interpreted them as guillemets anyway. Funny.
I suppose you (or me?) have an encoding problem.

H.
--
Hendrik Maryns
http://tcl.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~hendrik/
=============== ===
Ask smart questions, get good answers:
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